Let Them Speak to You
Myths and fairy tales are two things that we never tire of reading—there’s something comforting about reading a text that you know has been read for centuries, handed down and honored by generations of humans across the world. Because humans are hardwired to tell stories. Reading the mythologies of the classical age allows us as readers to step outside of our modern world and into a more liquid human form, finding the foundations for our society as we search for meaning in our lives.
As we did in our first issue, A Grimm Collection of Modern Fairy Tales, in curating this collection we looked for something unique, some aesthetics that donít necessarily sound as though theyíd go hand-in-hand. But that’s why we were looking for them—after all, we want our publication to step outside of the binary modes of narrative. We were looking for the feminine perspective in a myth shaped for the then-nascent patriarchal world. We wanted to find sensuality and tenderness in myths defined by force and lack of consent. We wanted to find rage in stories that are traditionally expressions of submission or compliance. We wanted to find the voices of the voiceless in these myths—and we found them, in abundance, while the authors still paid careful attention to maintaining the link and integrity of the classic work.
In each of our previous issues, we’ve found a certain zeitgeist in the authors that’s hard to explain: in the time that we’ve been publishing, we’ve had waves of Snow White pieces, a deluge of work that explored the personal life of Mary Shelley, and a thorough examination of the nature—and hazards—of a Tin Man having his wish for a heart granted. In this issue, the authors collectively and unconsciously embraced the myth of Persephone. And in a way, it’s easy to see why. We live in a time and a country that is remarkably advanced from the culture from which the Persephone myth was born, and yet, as a whole, we are still plagued by the concepts of consent, desire, and unions that defy the will of one’s parents. We struggle with the idea that our children will become fully realized sexual beings, and that the partners they choose may not always be the ones that we find appropriate. We may stand by helplessly as we watch our loved ones hijacked into unions they’re unprepared for, or as their bodily autonomy is violated. We find many a winter in our hearts, and we hold on to the hope which springs eternal in knowing that spring will come again, the snow will melt, the ground will thaw, and everything once dead will spring back to life green again, for a while.
As you move through this issue, listen to the seductive hiss of Medusa, the yearning call of Orpheus, the indignant snap of Eurydice. Find sprigs of desire poking up like blades of grass though the snow. Find rage like a scattering of salt, which melts the snow and reveals fallow fields beneath. As you read these stories, as you feel these poems, allow them to move through your body, take the thing in you thatís human and break it down to its liquid form. Absorb the language and ideas pushing from centuries ago back into the present, and know that in sharing these experiences with the long dead oral narrators, the modern authors who grace our pages, and your own imagination, you are one with all of them, and you may well find meaning that brings you something stronger—a seed, to plant, when the spring comes.
Allie Marini

Asterios, Daphne (cover)
MANDEM works across media and materials, intentionally destabilizing genre in terms of content and media. MANDEM is a Dedalus Foundation MFA Fellowship Nominee and recipient of the FSU Florence Teaching Award.

Hermaphrodite
Kristin grew up in Malaysian Borneo and exotic New Jersey. An emerging poet, she currently resides in Maine, where, when she is not writing, she is a Waldorf high school Humanities teacher.

Bound to Her Father’s Spear Hurled Over the River’s Current
Alessandra is the author of Nocturne and Guerrilla Blues. Her first chapbook, They Talk About Death, is available from Blood Pudding Press. Her forthcoming chapbook will be released by Dancing Girl Press.

The Moon Dog
Katharine’ss first novel, Alcestis—also a myth-based adaptation—was published in 2010 by Soho Press. Her writing has appeared in The Toast, TriQuarterly, Humanities, Public Books, and other publications.

Tuning Philomel’s Steely Strings in the Wasteland’s Dark Matter
Carina wrote travel articles and books about the Southwest. These days, she spends her time crafting twisted fairy tales and cross-pollinated mythic fiction. She is currently at work on the first novel in her five-book Elements series.

Asphodel Blooming
Kerry remains happily lost in the mists of tales and myths. She resides in a little house in a little suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with spouse, children, and pets all shoehorned within.

Eve and Pandora
Andrea writes poetry and fiction. Her poetry has appeared in Chiaroscuro (ChiZine), Strange Horizons, Perigee, Linden Avenue, Z-composition, Bear Creek Haiku, and Chinquapin.

The Labors
Michael wrote The Snow Vampire, and Tricks and Treats. He has work in Velvet Mafia, St. Sebastian Review, Icarus, Collective Fallout, The Spillway Review, Future Mysterious Anthology Magazine, The Brasilia Review.

Eurydice
Chella is the author Flying South and Love Letter to Biology 250. Her poetry and fiction appear in The Los Angeles Review, SmokeLong, and The Collagist. With another writer and two cats, she lives in California.

Bulfinch
Susan was executive director for San Francisco’s Beach Blanket Babylon, California Shakespeare Theater, and Chanticleer. Her work has appeared in Atlanta Review, Blast Furnace, The MacGuffin, River Oak Review, and Thema.

After the Tourist Bus Stops
Meg’s work has been published in B O D Y, Drunken Boat, Mudfish, and Rock & Sling. Her collections include Your Son, Rotary Phones and Facebook, and The Girl Who Came Back. She teaches at the University of Maryland.

Gordon
Joel has published stories in Flapperhouse and A Café in Space. He’s also edited comics, books and tons of manga, including the best-selling Godchild series.

Angela is a Chicago-based costume designer, artist and performer who has published fiction in Flapperhouse and A Café in Space. Her theatre work has been seen from Georgia to California to Detroit.

Euryhaline
Ruth work appears in Redheaded Stepchild, The Bellingham Review, Yemassee, and Sou’wester. Her chapbook Dear Turquoise is available from Dancing Girl Press. She serves as Managing Editor for Cider Press Review.

Drink Responsibly
Sonia has been published in The Bellevue Literary Review, Massachusetts Review, and The Best American Poetry 2010. “Drink Responsibly” won second place in the Edward W. Moses Graduate Creative Writing Competition.

Martial Acts
Deborah writes for Massage and Aroma Therapy Magazines. Her poetry appears in magazines in the UK, Exsistere in Canada, Tincture in Australia, Cha:Asian Literary Review, China, others in India, Greece, and the USA.

Father Dunne’s School for Wayward Boys: Dream Brothers
Kyle has been published in Your Impossible Voice, Night Train, Toad, Matchbox and elsewhere. His chapbooks are Underground Chrysanthemums and Terminal.

Minotaur Nutrition
Jesse first book of poems is Invisible Mink (Iris Press, 2010). She co-edited the literary anthology Outscape: Writings on Fences and Frontiers (KWG Press, 2008).

Spring Quartet
Sonia has work appearing in The Albatross, Off the Coast, and the Unrorean, and was a participating writer in the Found Poetry Review’s 2013 Pulitzer Remix Project and 2014 Oulipost Project.

Andromeda
Les is the author of the chapbook The Bureau. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as Southern Humanities Review, RomComPom, Apt, Sugar House Review, The White Review, The Boiler Journal, and elsewhere.

The Capitalist: A Fantasy
Llanwyre’s most recent story, a tale about a magical fish, has appeared in Solarwyrm’s Latchkey Tales collection. She teaches academic writing for a living and lives on the east coast with her husband, cat, and pet rats.

Ode to Dorothy Gale
Jenna is the author of Six Rivers. Her work has appeared in AGNI Online, Barrow Street, Bellevue Literary Review, Massachusetts Review, Measure, Pleiades, and 32 Poems. She lives in New York, where she works as a physician.

Philemon’s Gambit
Marie is the editor of poeticdiversity: the litzine of Los Angeles, and her work has been published in A New Ulster, Edgar Allen Poetry Journal, The Kentucky Review, NonBinary Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, and others.

Aphrodite in Manhattan
Geri has pieces in 5X5, Helen Literary, The Toast, New York Times, College English, Black Warrior Review, and others. She has a story in Pearson’s college lit anthology and in Spuyten Duyvil’s Wreckage of Reason II.

I Ran Past Consent
Kate’s poems appear in Coconut, h_ngm_n, Forklift, Ohio, The Destroyer, and phantomb limb. One of her poems will be included in the anthology Please Excuse This Poem: 100 Poems for the Next Generation.

Clytie
Christina holds a master’s in Creative Writing from Lancaster University in the U.K. Her work appears in various journals, among them The Crab Creek Review and The North (U.K.)

Man Proposes
Lennart is a short-fiction writer, poet, historian, and photographer. His work has appeared internationally since 1965. Len and his wife, Lin, live in northern Illinois.

Prayer to Athena
Mary’s work has appeared in Philadelphia Stories, Painted Bride Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, Pedestal Magazine, Word Riot, Contrary Magazine, New Delta Review, Midwestern Gothic, and Poetry International.

The Return of Orestes
John is an educator, composer, pianist and writer. His short fiction has appeared in various journals. When not writing stories he teaches at the University of Kansas.

Iphigenia
Carrie is a freelance bookkeeper who writes speculative fiction and poetry. The harrowing journey into the bookkeeping world led her to seek refuge in the book writing world, while hopscotching around the American West.

Orchis Feasting
Weslyn’s work has appeared in the Eyrie, The Blue Hour, and Along the Forgotten Coast: Selected Poems from Big Bend Poets. She likes photographing and macerating roadkill to create spooky stuff.

Cloaking Devices
Julia translated Blues For A Black Cat stories by Boris Vian and Boris Vian Invents Boris Vian (songs, stories, essays, poems). Her work has appeared in Poets & Writers, Furious Fictions, Exquisite Corpse, and The New Yorker.

The State of Southern California; Or Persephone
Alexis has work in The Paris Review, Drunken Boat, as well as a series of interventions on and responses to Sigmund Freud’s essay, “Mourning and Melancholia.”

Proserpina Awake
Janeen is the author of In the Yellowed House. Her poetry has appeared in Prime Number Magazine, Heron Tree and Atticus Review. Wayne State University Press nominated her poems for a Pushcart Prize.

Aftermath
Paul’s work has appeared in Danse Macabre, Exterminating Angel Press, Stepping Stones Magazine, Femicatio Magazine, Cultural Weekly and others. The Fallen Years, his debut novella, was released in October 2011.

Siren
Keely studied creative writing at Cornell University, where she received the Dorothy Sugarman Poetry Prize and the George Harmon Coxe Award for Fiction. Keely’s work has appeared in Spellbound, inkscrawl, and Leodegraunce.

Orpheus and Eurydice
Lillian has been published by or in Seal Press, Heinemann Press, Newtown Press, Spuyten Duyvil Press, Bloom/The Millions, Beatrice, HerKind/Vida, Deep Water Literary Journal, Beatriece and The Nervous Breakdown.

Real Life
Joseph is founding editor and publisher at Fathom Books, SHARKPACK Poetry Review, and SPR Annual, and non-fiction editor at Noble / Gas Qtrly. His first book of poems, Roads (Cherry Grove), appeared in 2013.

The Alliteriliad
David has worked as a journalist and as a biotechnologist, and has read Lolita 11 times, each Jim Thompson novel once, and War and Peace for the bragging rights. He lives in Montreal, Quebec.

Here Proserpine Was Playing…
Elizabeth is a half-centurion woman living in the wild woods. A professional photographer and lactation educator by trade. A writer by drive. She loves dogs, mules, tattoos, and reading poetic prose.

My Stripper Name is Medusa
Jaclyn has work in Collision Literary Magazine and Write Bloody Publishing and she has been published in The Feminist Wire and Zaum Literary Magazine.

Local Monsters
Laura is the author of Some Fatal Effects of Curiosity and Disobedience, Queen of the Platform, Sprung, and Spindrift, and the collaborative book Intimates and Fools with artist Sally Deskins.

Persephone – The Real Story
Meg has two books of poetry, Must Be Present To Win, and A Communion of Saints, as well as a collaborative photo/poetry book, Shadowed: Unheard Voices, published by The Press at Fresno State.

Launcher of Ships
Elizabeth’s work has appeared in Timeless Tales Magazine, and the anthologies Rapunzel’s Daughters and Playthings of the Gods. She lives in Philadelphia, and occasionally blogs about myths and fairy tales.

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