by Juliet Kemp As writers, we all have our own strengths – and our own shortcomings. At the start of your writing career, you’re working on everything all the time; as you improve, you can identify your strengths and lean into them. But to level up and develop your career, it’s vital (if tough!) to […]

by May Haddad Fantastic noir is a subgenre that blends film noir or its literary inspiration and counterpart, hardboiled fiction and roman noir (respectively), with the more outlandish elements of speculative fiction. It crops up here and there in films like Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers and Pokémon Detective Pikachu or novels like Jonathan Lethem’s […]

by J. Scott Coatsworth In the middle of 2022, I broke my arm. And not just a simple fracture—my orthopedic surgeon said it looked like it had exploded. Thus began a difficult (and still in progress) recovery. I won’t go into the gory details—suffice it to say that for about six weeks, I was unable […]

By J.D. Harlock Introduction The “belly dancer” is one of the most prevalent tropes western media has of Middle Easterners, and it’s often used as a cheap source of fan service in Middle Eastern and Arabesque settings. However, not only is this an insensitive portrayal of a revered traditional dance, but the inaccurate dress has […]