A rich meditation on the burden of remembrance, the ruins of the past, and the ruins that climate crisis will soon bring us, Landscapes is a tightly woven debut that travels easily between epistles, point of view shifts, and art criticism.

For a world currently crossing the threshold into climate apocalypse, hanging out as anti-despair, as an assertion of human dignity and value, feels revolutionary.

Perhaps, without realizing it, a part of me had begun to wish Pancake’s fame had never grown beyond the depths of the library where I found him, to wish his brutal brilliance was a secret known only within the state borders.

Emily D. is a biogenetically engineered entity gone wrong, somehow flubbed in the petri dishes and tubes of the “stardust editors of the Genzopolis,” thrown out like yesterday’s trash into a black hole that smells of honey and rhododendrons.

A rich meditation on the burden of remembrance, the ruins of the past, and the ruins that climate crisis will soon bring us, Landscapes is a tightly woven debut that travels easily between epistles, point of view shifts, and art criticism.

For a world currently crossing the threshold into climate apocalypse, hanging out as anti-despair, as an assertion of human dignity and value, feels revolutionary.

Emily D. is a biogenetically engineered entity gone wrong, somehow flubbed in the petri dishes and tubes of the “stardust editors of the Genzopolis,” thrown out like yesterday’s trash into a black hole that smells of honey and rhododendrons.

Natsumi knows she’s bored, but she keeps trying to convince herself that boredom is comfort, safety, and happiness. In actuality, boredom is the closest thing to Natsumi’s identity; it’s what she’s “about.”

I envy so much people who are able to edit, destroy, sculpt. Sometimes I worry I explode onto the page, and what may seem like stylistic choices are really just my overeagerness and inability to complete my own thoughts. 

As humans . . . we seem destined to look for patterns—which, to me, is another way of saying we’re on the hunt for “explanations.” Life is scary. We need all the help we can get to get through it. Biographical accounts, as often as not, seem to function as cautionary tales.

How might the stories of different characters tangle, or explode on contact, or narrowly miss each other, but create vibrations nonetheless?

I think so much of growing up is just looking at other people who are doing things you wish you could be doing and wondering how they got there. But then of course you have to find your own place in that. And that’s a tricky thing to do.

Perhaps, without realizing it, a part of me had begun to wish Pancake’s fame had never grown beyond the depths of the library where I found him, to wish his brutal brilliance was a secret known only within the state borders.

But, really, how many of us in Europe are aware of our own country’s dark histories?

It wasn’t until Barbie left Barbie Land that the proverbial needle skipped for me. I didn’t watch the Barbie Movie expecting a feminist film. I never imagined the need to critique it as such. But the Barbie Movie has proclaimed itself a feminist film, and so must be critiqued in this light.

Apocalypse might be what it means to wake up from dreams, or to close, for the last time, a book. Apocalypse might be the name for the self’s end, or the dissolution of the world into memory.

With readings by Semyon Khokhlov, Sadie Dupuis, and Anni Liu, and comedian Arthur Tarley, & musical performances by Philadelphia-based musician Spidr and Or Best Offer from Providence, RI.

To meet our full match and make the most of this opportunity, we need your help in raising $1,500 by the end of the year.

Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think.

Reclaiming Horror, a special issue of Full Stop Quarterly, guest-edited by Gillian Joseph