I’m grateful to the editors for the invitation to help curate this issue. I was there when this publication was just an idea. Fast forward two years and Apparition Lit is a fully formed magazine, barnacles and all. I’ve watched these women pour their time, resources, and passion into promoting new and established writers, all for the love of speculative fiction. Their grit and no-nonsense approach to launching this site is proof that in this toxic climate, a little determination, confidence, and focus will go a long way. Disregard the naysayers. We should all push outside our comfort zones, because that’s where miracles and magic happen.
Isn’t that what we want in these challenging times? Miracles and magic. To be swept away from reality and lose ourselves in the bliss of fiction. To be frightened, inspired, excited. Experience a touch of euphoria, however fleeting. As you will see in this eighth issue of the magazine, euphoria takes many forms and is as unique as the people experiencing it. One person’s intoxicating high may be another’s nightmare. These stories and poems are striking in their subject matter, styles, and perspectives. You’ll experience euphoria in fantastic, sometimes humorous, and terrifying terms.
In A Gentler Sky, a young girl embraces her culture’s demand for the ultimate sacrifice. An Account of the Defeat of the Earth’s Conqueror introduces us to an endearing intergalactic sociologist with a soft spot for humanity. Ilya’s Egg asks us to reflect on what makes a home and more importantly–what it means to leave it. The Word for What We Have is a haunting visit to the liminal space between wakefulness and sleep and our perception of our most important relationships. The poems Belly of the Beast and La Luna Rasa are weird and wonderful, plumbing the depths of space. We also have an essay It’s Not a Big Thing by Amy, you’ll want to be sure to read.
We hope you enjoy these stories and poems as much as we did and invite you to submit your work for the upcoming issue themed Experimentation, due out in January 2020.
Yeah–give me some of that.
Ezzy G. Languzzi
Apparition Literary Magazine
Euphoria Issue Guest Editor
Ezzy Languzzi is a Latinx writer of speculative fiction. Her short stories Naranjas Inmortales and Viva La Muñeca can be found respectively in the anthologies STRANGE CALIFORNIA and BROAD KNOWLEDGE: 35 WOMEN UP TO NO GOOD. Her story Soledad will appear in the LATINX ARCHIVE in 2021. She has contributed tie-in fiction and background setting design for various RPG properties, forthcoming in 2020. She holds an M.Ed in School Counseling and is currently pursuing her MFA in Popular Fiction Writing and Publishing at Emerson College. She lives outside of Boston with her husband, son, and two labradoodles.
Apparition Literary Magazine is funded by the editors and by your kind donations. If you’d like to support us, you can follow us on Facebook or Twitter and please consider donating and/or subscribing via our website. For 2019, we’re pleased to announce that we’ve increased our pay rate for short stories to $0.03 per word and poetry to $15 flat rate.
Thank you for reading,