The knight looked out over the rolling hills, hands on her knees and sword resting on the ground in front of her, ready to be snatched up at a moment’s notice. It was dark, with only the moon and the faint flickering firelight providing any visual on the surrounding area, but her eyes were sharp and well-accustomed to seeing in near pitch-black. The plains where they had made camp seemed to stretch endlessly, grass rippling...
Read moreby Savannah Jade Firm arms wrapped around my body as we lay atop a dark green crocheted blanket in the sand. Each grain molded to the contours of our figures, leaving imprints in the shape of mini sand dunes. Past his shoulder where my chin rested, my fingertips grazed the peak of the nearest dune, tracing the curvature of Earth’s natural occurring memory foam. The sand trickled down, forming a small waterfall that shimmered like...
Read moreby Meahgan Ferral In the dark of the woods, where sunbeams rarely kissed the ground and strangers never stepped, there was a small community, tucked away in the leaves and branches and dirt. I’ve lived my life there, in a cabin with my parents and sister. The two of us spent our childhood roaming beneath the trees with our parents at our heels, whispering in our ears to never wander too far, to never stray...
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Science fiction allures and enthralls because of the unique worlds each story holds. At the core of science fiction, there’s science: some new knowledge, discovery, or breakthrough. Then, there’s technology: how that science is applied, from daily life to a planetary or (inter)galactic scale. When you hear “science,” your mind might jump to physics, biology, chemistry—all those hard sciences. But don’t discount the social sciences, like psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Blending together different sub-sciences leads Read more
Romance is the genre that inspired me to write as a kid. It felt more welcoming and attainable, since I viewed it in an escapist light. I realized I didn’t have to take myself or my writing so seriously, but rather just try to write something fun, interesting and well-written. Another beauty of romance, no pun intended, is how central love is in our lives. Everyone wants to love and be loved in some sense Read more
Our pulse quickens. Our eyes grow wide. We gasp for breath, shudder, and shrink back into our seats. Horror readers—and writers—are a true contradiction. As our favorite genre hurls us mercilessly into our deepest childhood frights, feeds us to monsters, and speeds us headlong into destruction and death, we’ve never felt more alive. What is it about wandering through words, away from the safety of the light, into the terrors of the darkness, through dizzy Read more
Sitting amidst the woods with the golden glow of the sun, you watch satyrs run by with their flutes. Fairies zoom to join them. Well, except for one. She’s barely the size of your finger, but you still manage to see her smile beneath her wide eyes. The fairy offers a hand to you. Sound familiar? Fantasy is a genre known for bending reality in beautiful ways. Whether the world is based on our own, Read more
In thrillers, good and evil are divided. Moral choices stay clear, though risks are high and calls are hard. For all the palpitation-inducing danger, for each acid spurt of adrenaline, what whiplashes protagonist and reader through each thriller’s plot is the knowledge that they have something worth saving. They are the ones who will fight for good. They are the ones who will face down evil. Mysteries can twist the reader’s perception with unreliable narrators, Read more
I read all genres, but mysteries were there for me when the going was rough. During the hardest times in my life I engaged my overactive mind in high-stakes puzzles, in fictional webs of deceit, and in dropped clues and red herrings. Each mystery pointed out the truth: sometimes, life went sideways, the world went wrong, and people went wrong, too. I didn’t want to be gaslit into thinking everyone was safe. I knew that Read more
By Bretton Cadigan As a kid I’d often head to the mall with my parents, and if I’d saved up enough allowance, I’d head to GameStop and buy a new video game, along with the strategy guide. If you don’t know about strategy guides (maybe you don’t play games, or you play games better than I do), a strategy guide is a beautifully illustrated paperback manual of hints and strategies meant to help uncover and Read more
By Nick Mendillo The film Good Boy was released on October 3, 2025. Marketed as “a horror film that follows the perspective of the dog,” it immediately intrigued me. I’ve always believed all things are better with dogs—especially horror—and knowing the dog wouldn’t die (as confirmed by director Ben Leonberg) made it irresistible. The premise is deceptively simple: Indy, the canine protagonist, experiences the threats and eerie surroundings of a haunted house. On its surface, Read more
By Marielle Seche Trigger Warnings: Suicide, Sexual Assault, Abuse “KATABASIS, noun, Ancient Greek: The story of a hero’s descent to the underworld.” R. F. Kuang’s latest book, Katabasis, is a dark academia fantasy novel that follows two Cambridge graduate students of magick: Alice Law and Peter Murdoch. They use their magical knowledge to journey into Hell to retrieve the soul of their professor and academic advisor, Jacob Grimes—whom they may have accidentally killed. With what’s Read more
By Jagger van Vliet From out of a murky trance, there came the sudden rushing of light, the brutal sting of salt, and the sullen grey of morning. A thin, brown rat named Percival awoke from a terrible dream and looked blearily out into the gloom. Nothing around him was familiar, save for the hordes of other rats who were also waking from their own respective slumbers. All of the rat colony, it would seem, Read more
By Zenia deHaven The rescue mission was going great until the geography quiz. Though Eris reveled in her unsavory profession of snatching purses, gathering blackmail, and pilfering anything shiny she could get her itchy hands on, the pay was sporadic. She could be rolling in gold one week and then counting out bronze pieces on her landlord’s desk the next. This was one of those weeks. So when she saw a flyer promising 20,000 gold Read more