Tag: chapbooks

Ruins Speculative Fiction Zine

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

My newest zine, Ruins, collects seven illustrated pieces of speculative short fiction about the people and places left behind after the world has moved on. 

“Ruins” is a theme that’s near and dear to my heart for two reasons.

The first has to do with the spaces I occupy both in my imagination and in real life. I’m a big fan of dark fantasy video games, which often involve exploring gorgeously ruined spaces. In the real world, I live in a part of Philadelphia that has a bold culture and a strong sense of community, but its infrastructure has definitely seen better days. Over the course of a normal day, I pass by (and occasionally through) multiple abandoned structures. Both in video games and in my own neighborhood, seeing those sorts of spaces makes me want to know their stories.

The second reason is more personal. It’s embarrassing to admit this, but the Covid pandemic was nothing short of apocalyptic for me. For reasons beyond my control, almost everything in my life was destroyed suddenly and without warning. I survived and rebuilt, of course. Still, it would be difficult to say that I’m not haunted by the ruins of everything that ended just a few years ago.

As a writer of speculative fiction, it’s therefore not so much the apocalypse that interests me, but rather what comes after. Even when the world ends, life is still well worth living. What I wanted to do with the stories in Ruins is to share my experience of the chaotic joy of transition and the gentle beauty of decay. Though the stories are told from the perspective of a variety of human and inhuman narrators who have found themselves in strange circumstances, I hope that a sense of calm and quiet optimism shines through their words.

Paper copies of the zine are available on Etsy, and you can download a free digital version from Itch.io here:

🌿 https://digitalterrarium.itch.io/ruins-zine
🌿 https://www.etsy.com/listing/4485202424/ruins-speculative-fiction-zine

I also want to give a shout to Dinchen, who created to beautiful pixel art for the zine’s front cover. Dinchen takes commissions via VGen (here), and links to all of their socials are on their Carrd site (here). Many thanks and much love also to RainbowPhilosopher, who created the atmospheric painting on the zine’s back cover. You can find links to her socials and her portfolio on DeviantArt (here), and she’s active on Instagram (here). I’m very honored to have been able to work with such friendly and talented artists!

Green Dreams: Tales of Botanical Fantasy

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

I’m excited to announce that I published a new zine! Green Dreams: Tales of Botanical Fantasy collects six illustrated stories about our relationships with plants and nature.

“Each turn of the seasons brings an end to lives both large and small, but new seeds sprout joyously from the ruins” is the zine’s tagline, and disaster is a major theme of the collection. One of the opening stories is about the gradual effects of climate change; and, in the closing story, environmental catastrophes have become so severe that humans have disappeared completely. The zine also features stories about a medical tragedy narrowly averted, the aftermath of a devastating war, and a porous biological quarantine.

I considered subtitling the zine “Tales of Botanical Dark Fantasy,” but the truth is that none of the stories are actually that “dark.” In fact, I’d say the main theme of the collection is a persistent hope for the future. At this particular moment in history, the state of the world seems very bleak, so it’s good to remember that the environment that surrounds us is much larger – but also much more personal – than whatever horrors are currently unfolding.

Precisely because are so many fires burning in the world, I think it’s important to spend time in thriving green spaces that suggest futures of shifting and changing growth. I believe that a mindful contemplation of our natural environment can also be useful in the uncomfortable but necessary process of decentering normative humanity while challenging the artificial divisions we impose on ourselves and each other.

The incredible cover art by Frankiesbugs captures the mood of these stories perfectly.

Frankie creates bold and imaginative botanical fantasy art, and I asked them to illustrate the pagan archetypes of the flower maiden and the horned god, who together represent the endless natural cycle of death and rebirth. In this zine, I wanted to play with symbols that convey the beauty and mystery of the natural world, and Frankie embraced this theme, tinging the painting with potent Christian motifs and a powerful sense of fertility.

It’s an extremely impressive piece of art, and you to check out more of the artist’s work on Instagram (here), on Bluesky (here), and on Redbubble (here).

In this collection, I did my best to share a sense of fertile “green dreams” for the future. Mostly, though, I just really wanted to write some fun ecofiction about plants and mushrooms.

If you’re interested, you can read a free digital version of the zine on Itch.io or order a print copy from Etsy.

🌿 https://digitalterrarium.itch.io/green-dreams
🌿 https://www.etsy.com/listing/4351990958/green-dreams-fantasy-fiction-zine

Summer Break

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

In December 2019, I printed a chapbook that contains my unofficial translation of Hiromi Kawakami’s “Summer Break” (Natsu yasumi), the second story in the author’s prizewinning 1998 collection Kamisama. This story has not been officially translated, so I created a translation of my own to use in my Japanese literature classes.

“Summer Break” is a Studio Ghibli style celebration of the magic of the natural world and a quiet meditation on coping with mental illness. The narrator spends a few weeks working at a pear orchard, where they unwittingly adopt a trio of small tree spirits. One of these creatures is humorously neurotic, and its anxiety for the future resonates with the worries of the narrator, who feels that the world is slipping away from them.

You can download a free PDF copy of the chapbook from Itch.io here:
🌿 https://digitalterrarium.itch.io/summer-break

The cover illustration was created by Koyamori, who goes by @maruti_bitamin on Instagram.