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BySarah Pinsker

Remembery Day

I woke at dawn on the holiday, so my grandmother put me to work polishing Mama’s army boots.

ByJason Sizemore

Words from the Editor-in-Chief

Welcome to issue 72!

ByRussell Dickerson

Interview with Cover Artist Adrian Borda

This month’s Apex Magazine cover artist is Adrian Borda, whose surreal and imaginative works offer a fascinating look at life. His work often explores heavy emotions through inanimate objects, giving life to the otherwise lifeless.

ByJennie Goloboy

Never Enough Farmers! Class and Writing Fantasy Novels

It always starts in a bar. The barmaid (always buxom) has been serving beer since the church bells rang, precisely at five. Inside, the minstrel has been playing his lute, and the blacksmith drinking one stein after another.

ByLia Swope Mitchell

Slow

From her mouth exhales some warm magic that sweeps the marble dust away, and this is the first thing he sees, though he does not quite understand that he sees: her lips with their red stain worn away, paled in a utility light’s blaze. Below her chin a dust mask snares her throat.

ByNaomi Kritzer

Wind

Once upon a time, there were two young girls, closer than sisters, who dreamed of greatness.

ByOctavia Cade

Crow

Carmen had come back from shore leave, come back from weaning her child, and she’d missed the feel of salt crusting on her lips, the dry wind sucking moisture from her eyes. Missed wood under her heels and being rocked instead of rocking.

ByAndrea Johnson

Interview with AC Wise

AC Wise has been publishing steadily for nearly ten years, and in that time, her work has appeared in Apex Magazine, Shimmer, Pseudopod, GigaNotoSaurus, Lightspeed Magazine, Clarkesworld, The Canadian Science Fiction Review, among others, and in anthologies such as Upgraded, Clockwork Phoenix, The Best Horror of the Year, Imaginarium, Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales, Streets of Shadows, and Years Best Weird Fiction, among many, many others.

ByA.C. Wise

Silver Buttons All Down His Back

His fingers fit through the diamond slots in the chain link fence like nothing has changed, as though he never went to college or moved away from home. Except now, instead of a high school in the distance behind the runners in their white T-shirts and matching blue-and-grey track shorts, it’s a rocket.