New little book, six magical realist short stories, arguably feminist magical realism. There is such a thing. I didn’t make it up, although I would have.
These stories have been sitting around in a computer file for ages. I didn’t know what to do with them. Magical realism, in which strange things happen unaccountably within perfectly normal circumstances, is not widely understood or popular in the U.S. It is generally associated with Spanish-speaking writers and more recently with oppressed minorities.
There were a number of online zines publishing MR, but all of them died at the same time. In 2017. That was when something very strange happened within what had been the perfectly normal circumstance of a presidential election. And the strangeness didn’t end. Suddenly we were actually living in a story that defied all rationality. A story of bad magic, all day every day. An impossible fiction was actually happening. It was real. From 2017 on, there was no longer any need for fictional magical realism.
That journey across a landscape of Things That Cannot Be may soon end. With a return to the reliably mundane world of normal circumstance, readers may safely again explore the curious realm of magical realism.
This brief anthology is meant to be a small flag on that landscape. Click on the cover to see it.
abigail padgett 