I'm excited to announce that my poem, "My Mother, the Exoskeleton," won the Brave New Weird Award from Tenebrous Press. Thank you to the editors of Tower Magazine, Róisín Byrne & James Hudson, who published this in End, the first volume of their magazine, and who submitted my poem for the award.
The winners of the Brave New Weird Award will published in an anthology which is currently available for pre-order in the Tenebrous Press Store and launches on June 26th.
My multi-part speculative poem for adults, "My Mother, the Exoskeleton" is on the shortlist for the Brave New Weird anthology. Apparently they received over 1,000 submissions for the anthology. Exciting!
Once, I was a human girl.
You wouldn’t know it to look at me now, but long ago, when devas and demons roamed the earth, I was a human girl who dreamed of being a dancer.
The rains had finished, and the Kaveri River swelled threateningly close to the outskirts of the village. In no rush to return home, I sat idling by the riverbank in the marshy reeds, my toes in the water, dreaming of dancing. I wanted to feel the rhythm of the drums in my body, of the high flute winding around my skin. More than that, I wanted to be free of my family.
But instead, that was the day I would meet my future husband. My family was eager to marry me off. I had heard them say as much that morning.
Read the rest of my recently published short story, "Kaliya, Queen of Snakes," over at Zooscape e-zine. Perfect for fans of Madeline Miller's Circe, this is a retelling of the Hindu legend of the epic battle between Krishna and Kaliya, in which Kaliya is a fierce, shapeshifting teenaged girl.
