Issues

 

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Spring 2024

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For whom do we become malleable? When do we break, instead of bend? This issue of Aster(ix) explores these questions. Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder Angie Cruz solicited 12 writers to respond to a series of artwork by Laylah Ali. They wrote back in micro-fictions, creative nonfiction, poems, and pieces that ignore boundaries of genre. Drawings by Ali are interspersed throughout.

Winter 2023-24

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We are thrilled to share our Winnter 2023 release, The 10th Anniversary Issue Part II: Fiction & Interview. Aster(ix) is a laboratory, a space where women writers of color can play and experiment. We celebrate our 10th anniversary with a double best-of issue. Part II includes:

June 2023

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We are thrilled to share our Spring 2023 release, The 10th Anniversary Issue Part I: Poetry & Nonfiction. Aster(ix) is a laboratory, a space where women writers of color can play and experiment. We celebrate our 10th anniversary with a double best-of issue. Part 1 includes:

December 2022

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Aster(ix) presents The Tarot Issue featuring Chancletazo for Your Soul, a reimagining of the Major Arcana with Latinx sociopolitical and cultural icons. This all-color issue highlights beautiful and powerful rendition of collage and words of the Major Arcana by Marlène Ramírez-Cancio, edited by Amanda Tien. Includes:

September 2022

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Aster(ix) presents Mothers Unearthed Includes:

  • A Conversation Between the Editors by Emily Raboteau & Tanya Shirazi
  • “Climate Refuge” by Sujatha Fernandes / Nonfiction Many people, especially migrants and the working class, have been pushed to the periphery of the city where they are at greater risk of extreme heat, bushfires, and floods. Vasant, his partner and three kids have to evacuate their house multiple times during the bushfires, for weeks at a time.
  • “Concerning the Sea Stars” by Deesha Philyaw / Fiction Remember how Cleo called to us as she bounced, “MommyDaddy, look at me, MommyDaddy!” because we were, for her, a single unit of love?
  • “Unconscious” by Nimmi Gowrinathan / Nonfiction His eyes widened when I told him about the sea. “It really turned black? Thirty feet high?” Questions to confirm what he already knew. His face crashing with a sudden realization: “Think of all the fish that died.”
  • “Dead Deer” by January Gill O’Neil / Poetry White tail. Little peninsula. Nights ago, I startled you with my headlights
  • “Making Our Own Weather” by Claire Boyles / Nonfiction Pyrocumulus clouds rise above fires that burn with special inten- sity. The clouds are multi-colored—shades of brown and grey and white, gilded with silver—as beautiful as they are terrifying.
  • “The Recycling at Isaiah Gardens” by Carolyn Ferrell / Fiction Do not spy or repeat stories on neighbors in the name of climate changeability. That means you Miss Fields of 5G. Miss Sharpe of 2G don’t have nothing to do with you or your Paper or Cans or Bottles.
  • “Seasonal Affective Disorder” by Marie Myung-Ok Lee / Nonfiction I participated in a kimjang, a late-autumn ritual of mass outdoor production of kimchi for winter… It’s not all done on a specific day but is more like the intermittent synchrony of fireflies. You’ll just know when it’s time…
  • “Water” by Chika Unigwe / Fiction Mmuofunanya ignored him and whispered over and over again, Mmiri. Mmiri m. My own water. She would name her child.
  • “She Doesn’t Want to be Called a Human” by Kianny N. Antigua / Nonfiction More than my daughter, she is the mother, the voice of rea- soning, who didn’t wait for others to make a move first. She, as Mother Earth, is angry, and who wouldn’t be? Why wouldn’t they? Why wouldn’t She?
  • “Prime Coats” by Stacy Parker Le Melle / Nonfiction We agreed to twenty dollars. We bought men’s and women’s underwear, and a baby’s blanket. I wished we could have bought more, but we were in credit card debt as it was. There had to be limits. Right?
  • “Dreaming a Sacred Garden” by Vanessa Mártir / Nonfiction I was in my forties and a mother myself when mom revealed how she learned to garden. Up until then, her stories of her child- hood in Honduras were of hunger and suffering. We were poor, but I didn’t know the hunger mom spoke of.
  • “Basil” by January Gill O’Neil / Poetry Because some days there is no mercy, I’m counting my remaining supply
  • “Spaceship” by Emily Barton / Nonfiction “If I cast my mind forward into the future I won’t live to see, I can at least imagine the spaceship, my kids and my neighbor’s kids watching it launch, remembering their mothers as they do their small part of tikkun olam, repairing the world.”
  • “We Were Warned” by Belle Boggs / Nonfiction “I can’t die anyway,” I said, my anger dissipating just a little as I realized this complicated, impossible truth. “My kids need me.”

December 2021

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Aster(ix) presents The Fiction Issue. Includes:

    • “Time Wave” by Racquel Goodinson I breathed deeply and pulled a sigh from the well inside me.  I sent it out with a gust of air.  I felt time flow before me and around me, rolling and unfurling, curling and tumbling back.
    • “LINA AND BABY” by Amy Olassa It will be more honest and pleasant, they might even have something in common, and Lina will tell this man that she’s in no rush. They must take the time they need; it is the beginning of uncertainty.
    • “Betty Davis Eyes” by Hannah Eko I turn around to face her. “No, she barely said a word,” I say.
    • “Today I Will Bake a Cake” by Layhannara Tep I knocked three times on Sue’s front door and placed the paper bag in her outstretched arms. “Betty Crocker.” I said before waving goodbye and making my way back down the familiar road home. I smiled like the good Christians in Beaverton do.
    • “Last-Last Resignation” by Mubanga Kalimamukwento If it don’t happen: good! But if it do, allow your tongue to move quick this time, like hot butter in a frying pan. Don’t say, ‘I need someone to watch Lubuto,’ no. Say Sorry for true-true, this time.
    • A reprise: selected micro-fictions from The Amaranta Project Six selected micro-fictions, in English and in Spanish, in response to Cecilia Vicuña’s painting from 1972 “Amaranta.” The painting had been “lost and reborn” in 2021 when found. Featuring:
      • “Awake” by Kali Fajardo Anstine 
      • “Germinates” by Kianny N. Antigua
      • “Answer” (Atender) by Jennifer Croft 
      • “Your Daughter Refashions the Flag into a Crop Top” by Rosa Alcalá
      • “Unfading” by Nathalie Handal
      • “Feedback Loop” by Nelly Rosario
      • Translations of all by Kianny N. Antigua
    • “Snap This Photo of Two Good Men” by Catalina Bartlett I dropped the phone, ran outside, and turned on the spigot. Water flushed from the hose. I dragged it toward the wheatfields, as fire engines screamed down the dirt road.
    • “Quimbamba” by Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro, translated by Lawrence Schimel Quimbamba barks. She growls. She bites me and blood wells. Then I reach out a hand and grab her. I embrace her too tightly. I almost smother her. I squeeze so tight she howls and it’s only then that I realize that it’s both of us who are howling.
    • “The Wall” in English and Turkish by Sabahattin Ali, translated by Aysel K. Basci Most of the bones had separated from one another. Near the feet was a pair of old shoes, and a little further, a leather pouch. I lifted my head and looked at the grey-haired prisoner next to me. He was still squeezing my hand and trembling. His face was very pale, and expressed utter disbelief. It was the look of someone who had just narrowly escaped death and who was embracing life…
    • “Escape” by Toni Margarita Plummer Maybe she wasn’t really a virgin. But she was something better. Free.
    • “The Bank of Paradise” by Monique McIntosh As he rushed off-board to chase his brand new hat down Harbor Street, the wind of upheaval still hissed in his ears, he knew instantly he was never going to make it to New York. Not when the road felt so sound and certain under his feet — stronger than any promise of paradise.

Summer 2021

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Aster(ix) presents Best of Hot Metal Bridge (2007-2020). Includes:

 

October 2020

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Aster(ix) presents The Ferrante Project. Contributors include: Cathy Linh Che, Angie Cruz, Natalie Díaz, Ru Freeman, Sarah Gambito, Cristina García, Jamey Hatley, Dawn Lundy Martin, Ayana Mathis, Vi khi nao, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Deborah Paredez, Khadijah Queen, Emily Raboteau, Paisley Rekdal, and Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon. The Issue:

Winter 2020

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Aster(ix) presents The Poetry Issue. Includes:

Summer 2019

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Aster(ix) presents Inheritance. Includes:

Winter 2018/2019

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“In 2013 when we started Aster(ix), we didn’t know what we were committing ourselves to, but for the past five years the journal has been fueled with urgency, love and desire for a space that could house our wild tongue, imagination and vision…” Aster(ix) Journal’s Winter 2018/2019 Double Issue, (Un)bound: Five Years of Asterisms, collects our favorite writing from the Asterisms section of the online journal, writing that embodies the spirit of Aster(ix) five years into our extraordinary adventure. Aster(ix) presents (Un)bound: Five Years of Asterisms. Includes:

Fall 2018

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Aster(ix) presents Edges.  Includes:

Fall 2017

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Aster(ix) presents Dirty Laundry.  Includes:

Summer 2017

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Aster(ix) presents Kitchen Table Translation.  Includes:

Spring 2017

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Aster(ix) presents Best of Kweli.  Includes:

Fall 2016

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Aster(ix) presents What We Love.  Includes:

Spring 2016

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Aster(ix) presents Atravesando.  Includes:

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