I was thinking of posting a rant about how difficult writing fiction in Finnish is for me (I was attempting such a thing last night), but I think I’ll go for Sunday recs instead. How my bilingualism comes across in my writing is a topic I want to write a more thoughtful post on.
So, on to other people’s writing:
Prose
Two stories I’ve recently read and enjoyed:
In the Greenwood by Mari Ness at Tor.com. I’ve always liked Robin Hood stories, and this was a nice take on the tale. When a tale is well-known, you can write around its edges. That often makes for intriguing stuff. (Also, the illustration is gorgeous!)
What Is Expected of a Wedding Host by Ken Liu at Daily Science Fiction. I love pieces that play with the forms a story can take – this list of instructions for a person accepting an alien parasite is a great example. Also, it’s quite funny too. Always appreciated. 🙂
Poetry
As for poetry – I’m going to rec two whole issues, because there was just too much intriguing stuff in them and they work so well as a whole.
February’s Snakeskin was a special issue featuring poetry comics – here. I was going to submit some stuff to it last autumn, but in the end I felt too busy and stressed out to work on anything “new” in terms of form. Sad. Anyway, poetry comics are a form I’m interested in, and it was great to see a whole collection of them in Snakeskin. It’s inspired me to do some of my own and not stress about it so much. The art doesn’t have to be perfect. It should be fun as well. Perhaps poetry comics could be a way of keeping up my old art hobby! (It’s mostly fallen by the wayside due to all the million other things I do.)
Stone Telling’s 10th issue, Body, is all-round amazing. I love the depth of thought that has gone into selecting the poems for this issue. They tie together so well. Read the whole issue! Some poems that especially hit me were The Honey Times by Cathy Bryant
and Trance for Insomniacs by J.C. Runolfson. C.S.E. Cooney’s And I’ll Dance With You Yet, My Darling is a great final poem for the issue.