I still have the bracelet you gave me. I carry it in my pocket. I still have a redness on my wrist, as if someone’s grabbed me.
Dear Fox,
Hey. It’s Sahra. Sometimes I just feel like leaving one word. Even if it’s just my name. A single thread.
Dear Fox,
Hey. It’s Sahra.
Dear Fox,
Hey. It’s Sahra.
Dear Fox,
Hey. It’s Sahra.
I got your message.
Publication History
“Selkie Stories Are for Losers,” Strange Horizons, January 2013.
“Ogres of East Africa,” Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History, 2014.
“Walkdog,” Kaleidoscope: Diverse YA Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories, 2014.
“The Tale of Mahliya and Mauhub and the White-Footed Gazelle,” The Starlit Woods: New Fairy Tales, 2016.
“Olimpia’s Ghost,” Phantom Drift, Issue 3, Fall 2013.
“Honey Bear,” Clarkesworld Magazine 71, August 2012.
“How I Met the Ghoul,” Eleven Eleven 15, September 2013.
“Those,” Uncanny Magazine, 2015.
“A Girl Who Comes Out of a Chamber at Regular Intervals,” Lackington’s 2, May 2014.
“How to Get Back to the Forest,” Lightspeed 46, March 2014.
“Tender,” OmniVerse, 2015.
“A Brief History of Nonduality Studies,” Expanded Horizons 36, August 2012.
“Dawn and the Maiden,” Apex Magazine 47, April 2013.
“Cities of Emerald, Deserts of Gold,” Revelator 139,1, 2016.
“An Account of the Land of Witches” appears here for the first time.
“Request for an Extension on the Clarity” Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 33, 2015.
“Meet Me in Iram,” Guillotine Series 10, 2015.
“The Closest Thing to Animals,” Fireside Fiction 27, 2015.
“Fallow” appears here for the first time.
“The Red Thread,” Lightspeed 73, 2016.
Some stories here were inspired by or are in conversation with the following works, many of which are in the public domain or whose minimal usage falls within fair use; all other permissions are cited below. A good faith attempt was made by the author and publisher to identify and contact rights holders wherever appropriate and this list will be updated in future editions if rights holders are contacted:
Attar, Farid al-Din, translated by Charles Stanley Nott, The Conference of the Birds, Janus Press, 1954.
Baum, L. Frank, The Annotated Wizard of Oz. Edited with an Introduction and notes by Michael Patrick Hearn, W. W. Norton & Co., 2000.
The Black/Land Project question, “As a black person in the U.S., how would you describe your relationship to land?” www.blacklandproject.org/218.
Boehme, Jacob; tranlated by John Sparrow, Aurora, John T. Watkins, 1960.
Briggs, Katharine M., A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales in the English Language, Routledge, 1970.
Dinesen, Isak, Out of Africa, Penguin, 1937.
Funk, Joseph, The Confession of Faith, 1837.
Hume, David, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1748.
Iram Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iram_of_the_Pillars
Lyons, Malcolm C. (translator), Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange, Penguin Classics, 2015.
Martensen, Hans Lassen; trans. T. Rhys Evans, Jacob Boehme: His Life and Teaching, or Studies in Theosophy, 1949.
Excerpt from Dakota: A Spiritual Geography by Kathleen Norris. Copyright © 1993 by Kathleen Norris. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Oppenheimer, J. Robert, Physics in the Contemporary World, Anthoensen Press, 1947.
Schlabach, Theron F., Gospel Versus Gospel: Mission and the Mennonite Church, 1863-1944, Herald Press, 1980.
Seaborg, Glenn, 1947 Associated Press interview as quoted on Science Beat: lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/seaborg-quotes-own.html.
Ward, Sister Benedicta, SLG (translator), The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, 1975.
Acknowledgments
To the editors who first published the stories in this collection: Thank you for accepting the good ones and rejecting the bad ones. To Gavin J. Grant, who convinced me I had enough good stories to make a book: Thank you for keeping your eyes open! To Kathrin Köhler, my partner in crime: I couldn’t have done it without you. To Keith: Thank you again, and forever. To the many living writers whose influence flickers through these pages—Karen Joy Fowler, Kate Zambreno, Dodie Bellamy, Eileen Myles, S. D. Chrostowska, Kuzhali Manickavel, Nalo Hopkinson, Kelly Link: Here we are, together, in a way.
About the Author
Sofia Samatar (sofiasamatar.com) is the author of the novels A Stranger in Olondria and The Winged Histories. She has written for Strange Horizons, BOMB, and Clarkesworld, among others, and has won the John W. Campbell Award, the Crawford Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the World Fantasy Award. Two of her stories were selected for the inaugural edition of the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. She lives in Virginia.
Also by Sofia Samatar
A Stranger in Olondria
World Fantasy Award winner · British Fantasy Award winner · Crawford Award winner
Jevick, the pepper merchant’s son, has been raised on stories of Olondria, a distant land where books are as common as they are rare in his home—but which his mother calls the Ghost Country. When his father dies and Jevick takes his place on the yearly selling trip to Olondria, Jevick’s life is as close to perfect as he can imagine. Just as he revels in Olondria’s Rabelaisian Feast of Birds, he is pulled drastically off course and becomes haunted by the ghost of an illiterate young girl.
“Samatar’s sensual descriptions create a rich, strange landscape, allowing a lavish adventure to unfold that is haunting and unforgettable.” — Library Journal (*starred review*)
“Mesmerizing—a sustained and dreamy enchantment. A Stranger in Olondria reminds both Samatar’s characters and her readers of the way stories make us long for far-away, even imaginary, places and how they also bring us home again.” — Karen Joy Fowler, New York Times bestselling author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
paper · $16 · 9781931520768 | ebook · 9781931520775
Also by Sofia Samatar:
The Winged Histories
NPR Best Books of the Year
Four women—a soldier, a scholar, a poet, and a socialite—are caught up on opposing sides of a violent rebellion. As war erupts and their loyalties and agendas and ideologies come into conflict, the four fear their lives may pass unrecorded. Using the sword and the pen, the body and the voice, they struggle not just to survive, but to make history.
“Like an alchemist, Sofia Samatar spins golden landscapes and dazzling sentences. . . . The Winged Histories is a fantasy novel for those who take their sentences with the same slow, unfolding beauty as a cup of jasmine tea, and for adventurers like Tav, who are willing to charge ahead into the unknown.” — Shelf Awareness (*starred review*)
“All of it is harrowing — and written in such heart-stoppingly beautiful language there’s a good chance readers will ignore the plot and spend a few hours just chewing on the words, slowly, to draw out the flavor. Then they’ll need to read it again. Fortunately, this is a short book; also fortunately, there’s a lot of novel packed into relatively few pages. A highly recommended indulgence.” — N. K. Jemisin, New York Times Book Review
paper · $16 · 9781618731371 | ebook · 9781618731159
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Tender : Stories Page 28