Introducing Aubade, New Job Openings, & Cranesong
Happy holidays, dear songbirds! I & the whole Half Mystic team are so grateful for the brilliant, mellifluous community that’s arisen around our work. To each & every one of you, from the bottom of our hearts: thank you for being here.
In case you missed it, we cannot wait to hold another in-person gathering for you all on January 4, 2019: the launch of Half Mystic Journal’s Issue VI: Interlude at BooksActually in Singapore! After the sold-out Issue IV launch last year, we’ve had huge demand to hold another gathering in Singapore. We can’t wait to see all your beautiful faces, & welcome in the New Year in style with this stunning, liminal collection of poetry, prose, lyrics, & art. The launch features both established voices & rising stars in the independent literature & arts scene like Alvin Pang, Ethel Yap, Crispin Rodrigues, Jean Tan, Laetita K., & Jocelyn Suarez—plus an introduction by myself. Click here to RSVP & sign up for open mic slots.
We’re also pleased to announce that journal submissions are now open for Half Mystic Journal’s seventh semiannual issue! Issue VII will be around the theme of aubade: the dawn-dizzy dance—the first chords of warmth—the sun forgiving everything it touches.
An aubade is defined as a lovesong to the dawn, & we can’t wait to see what this issue has in store for Half Mystic’s community. If this theme speaks to you, submissions are now open (& for the first time in a year, we don’t already have a featured artist going into this issue—so visual artists, this is your time to shine if you’ve been wanting to work with HM!). Send us your brightest words, art, & music.
If you’d like to be involved with Half Mystic in a more permanent way, it’s a joy to tell you that staff applications are now open. The Half Mystic staff is a tight-knit, passionate, skilled group of writers, editors, designers, social media managers, & music lovers based all around the world. We currently have staff positions open in multiple fields. All positions are remote & volunteer. No experience is required to apply, as long as you love our work & are good at what you do!
Finally, perhaps most exciting of all: Half Mystic Press’ next book is open for preorder! Please give the warmest of welcomes to Rona Wang’s Cranesong. Half Mystic Press’ debut short story collection is, above all, a bright thing. It explores the trauma that haunts our bones, the echoes that infuse our language—&, at the same time, lingers inside wild wind, consumes the cartography of longing, interrogates all the colours piano music can hold. These stories pinwheel from realm to realm—some fantastical, some deeply modern, & some settling somewhere in between. Yet there is an ancestral lineage that braids them together. These characters don't exist in the same world, but if they did, perhaps they'd recognise each other.
If you’ve been around these parts a little while (as we know some of you have—thank you for your love since the beginning of this symphony!), you might recognise Rona Wang. She was originally published in Issue I: Allegro of Half Mystic Journal—& the short story of hers that Half Mystic published is featured in a revised form in this collection as well!
Erin O’Malley, a 2018 Lambda Literary Fellow & the managing editor of The Ellis Review, says of Cranesong: “The stories in Cranesong are the stories I've been waiting to read my entire life. They are the girlhood secrets, untranslatable sorrows, and quiet violences that often surround us but never quite catch our attention until they're told by a writer like Rona Wang, whose words will uplift you just as much as they will shatter you.”
Cranesong is available for preorder now. It will ship to your doorstep on February 13, 2019.
HM is juggling many projects right now, but honestly, we couldn’t be happier or more excited about each & every one. As we scale ledger lines & climb higher still, as we sing like dawn or doves, as we expand our team & publish books that redefine homelands & hug readers in person & edit podcast episodes & try, in between all this, to find time to sleep, there’s just one thing we want to celebrate this holiday season: you. Thank you, songbirds, for all your support. In the words of Issue I contributor Lyd Havens: with you by our sides, “suddenly, / everything is all right for three minutes / and forty-four seconds. There is no / conquering each other for our own / benefits. There is only the music, / and everything from the waist-down.” xx