khōréō, Volume 3, Issue 1

khōréō

by Aleksandra Hill (Editor), Kanika Agrawal (Contributor), Laura WANG (Contributor)

khoreo magazine’s Volume 3, Issue 1. Originally published March 15, 2023. Includes five fantastic stories: “The Field Guide for Next Time” by Rae Mariz; “For However Long” by Thomas Ha; “The Land of Happiness” by Laura Wang; “The Shadow and the Light” by Su-Yee Lin; “In April, the Dead” by Natalia Theodoridou. Cover and spot art created by The Creeping Moon.

ebook

First published March 15, 2023

About the author

Aleksandra Hill is a Polish-Canadian speculative fiction writer and the founder of khōréō, a magazine of speculative fiction by immigrant and diaspora writers. She earned an MFA at the New School in Fiction and Non-Fiction writing and is an alumna of the Odyssey Writers Workshop. In past lives, she earned a Ph.D. in computational biology and worked as a management consultant and a product manager.

Reviews

[Kathryn Atreides · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read Field Guide for Next Time (5 stars) and For However Long (4 stars).

Once I figured out what Field Guide For Next Time was doing and how all the footnotes and hyperlinks worked together I fell in love with the story. How ambitious to to write a story about a archivist translating a work of needle craft into text. Really beautiful imagery, the writing is gorgeous.

The auntie weaves the child into their living culture. Demonstrates how a life can be a single line of poetry: beautiful in itself, but its placement in a passage is what gives the final composition its meaning. Some aunties are the trusted adult for up to eight kids at a time, so over the years, they will contribute to the countless scriptures and ballads that make up entire families. And when at last the earth calls for their return, they may have co-authored the culture of whole cities.

A lot of the story hits the same beats as Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and I always love a fiction work that runs parallel to a non-fiction one.



I don't have any negative things to say about For However Long. I liked it, thought it was a good read, it just didn't have anything that really impressed or wowed me. I'm sure my feelings on the story would be different if I was in contact with my parents.

[AoC · Rating 4 out of 5]

Touching story about a mother reminiscing about the time spent with her son and connection to her own mother, For However Long is draped in SF clothing as her son is now on Mars with his own family. There's no usual techno babble here in this very short outing as emphasis is almost entirely on, well, finally seeing yourself in your parents' shoes as your child goes somewhere so far away where communication is not only delayed but actual visits would be measured in matter of months no one can ever get back. To think all that came from a single animated dino postcard that traveled over four hundred million kilometers to wish Happy Birthday.