Goblin Fruit ~ Winter 2014 Issue Is Live

Header/border by Zarina Liew

Renowned fantastic poetry journal, Goblin Fruit, has just released their latest quarterly collection of new fairy tale work and it's a truly lovely collection.

Here's an excerpt from the introduction by the Editors:

"...into the chattering season's teeth we throw this small morsel to sate it once and for all: here are songs of love and death, poems of winter's beauties but also of their banishment, of confrontation and change. Against the pale brilliance of glass, diamonds and cold stars are set colours all the brighter for striking against white — rose petals, apples, the feathers of hunting birds. This is an issue of women grasping their stories by the shoulders and shaking them into difference, tattering gowns into more comfortable wear; impossible as it seems, dear readers, Winter will break itself against a blossom growing out of a shoe."

So lovely and inspiring! That should make you want to drop everything else you're doing for the next little while and go grab yourself some fruit.

Here are this issue's contents:

The Cat on Love by Catt Kingsgrave 

Godfather Drosselmeyer by Sonya Taaffe 

The Vow of Frozen Time by Alexandra Seidel 

Through the Heron Door by Jack H. Marr 

The Right of It by Seanan McGuire 

Dear Prince by Kristina McDonald 

Said Rapunzel to the Wolf by Sally Rosen Kindred 

Spelling for Worse by Peg Duthie 

After the End by Kellelynne H. Riley

My favorites are The Right Of It by Seanan McGuire and Dear Prince by Kristina McDonald. I found these two in particular both inspiring and liberating. (Thank you Ms. McGuire, Ms. McDonald and Goblin Fruit!)

You can read the new works from Goblin Fruit HERE.

You should also be aware that Goblin Fruit is looking for patrons (your choice of amount you pledge per issue) to help expand more of what they do. When patronage builds to $100 per issue they'll be able to produce a podcast for each issue. At twice that they'll be able to triple the (almost token) amount paid to the truly excellent writers/contributors for each issue and ultimately they hope to be able to produce more print and e-book chapbook collections of each issue. Here's the summary from the patron pledge site:

Since April of 2006 Goblin Fruit has been publishing some of the best fantastical poetry out there, by new and established authors alike, putting out four issues a year without fail, for free and without ads. We've been fortunate enough to showcase these poems alongside the work of tremendously talented artists such as Oliver Hunter, Galen Dara, Betsie Withey, Elisabeth Heller, Paula Friedlander, and many more.   

For its first five years Goblin Fruit was a labour of love paid out of pocket by its editors; we opened up to donations with our Fifth Anniversary issue and have operated on that basis since 2011. With Patreon we hope to reach out to new readers, enable our current readers to support us more easily and with reward options, and bank towards running a podcast by April 2014 as well as produce more print and e-book chapbook collections.

And here's the promotional video for the journal: 

A promotional video for Goblin Fruit (http://www.goblinfruit.net) - the internet's coolest online fantasy poetry zine, published quarterly. Music is "The Night Journey," words by Terri Windling, vocals and instrumentals by Oliver Hunter.

You can contribute any amount from $1 up, HERE.
In the meantime, go read (and listen to) the issue. Be inspired.* It won't take very long, but it will stay with you, in the best way, for a long time to come.

* This issue is so deeply gorgeous, I would love to see what artists might create in response to these! Even if you don't consider yourself "an artist" and only create in private and for yourself, go read. This issue is like a creative well to dip into.