Hello, fellow voyagers! The full anthology for season 4 is available on Amazon now, both as an ebook and as a paperback. But paying Patrons can receive the PDF version for no additional charge. It’s included below, as a gift from me to you. All the stories, poems, and essays we’ve published this month are […]
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“The Chinese Dragon in Our Pond” by Lu Xu (Orion’s Belt Fiction 2024)
It was a humid summer day, and if grandfather was still with us, we’d be eating lychee in the kitchen while he smoked a cigarette. But his seat at the table had been empty for a week now, and to distract my brother, I let him catch cicadas and play in the pond. This is […]
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“Every Story is a Teacher” by Joshua Fagan (Orion’s Belt Essay – September 2024)
There is a quote I particularly like from H.W. Garrod, an early twentieth-century literary critic: “What we resent in didactic poetry is not that it teaches, but that it does not teach, its incompetency.” Garrod perhaps came to this conclusion while studying Keats, whose writings he examined quite closely. Keats, in a letter to a […]
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Orion’s Belt Interview: Marie Croke (Fiction- August 2024)
Sara Omer: “The Impermanent Surface of Lake Scintillate,” is a glittering cautionary tale touching on the irresistibility of social media and the cultlike reverence it inspires. It’s Black Mirror but make it poetic, dreamy prose. What were your inspirations in exploring this metaphor? Marie Croke: Poetic, dreamy prose is what I strive for! Often, for […]
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Orion’s Belt Cover Art August 2024 Issue
Some geometric, ethereal cover art for our next issue, courtesy of the Editor in Chief.
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rookery by D.A. Xiaolin Spires (Orion’s Belt Poetry – August 2024)
they came in droves in cyclones and rainfall, in windstorms and pelting hail each icy rock— heavenfall— a tiny drone delicate wings filigree work, they lay inert like cicada broods— emerging mating and death but it seemed backwards their inertness came to life so it went— death mating emergence they arrived lifeless but somehow buffeted […]
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The Importance of Adventure Fiction by Joshua Fagan (Orion’s Belt Essay – August 2024)
Until the twentieth century, “romance” as a genre did not necessarily refer to a love story. It meant something much closer to The Lord of the Rings than Romeo and Juliet. The term survives, albeit in semi-obscurity, in the phrase “chivalric romance,” which suggests the general connotations of the idea. Romance meant travel and wonder, the interaction […]
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The Impermanent Surface of Lake Scintillate by Marie Croke (Orion’s Belt Fiction – August 2024)
In the center of our neighborhood, inside the green where the mowers keep the grass trim and the signs say NO BOATS ALLOWED, is our lake. It’s a small lake; eight acres, give or take, with crawdad mounds and snails dotting its weathered edge. The surface sparkles at dawn. At dusk. Under moonlight. Under lamplight. […]
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Orion’s Belt Interview: Audrey Zhou (July 2024)
Sara Omer: In “Five Stages of Shedding a Skin,” Ming grieves her old memories as she prepares for a new life at the hands of the enigmatic Tailor, who will help her shed her old skin like a snake. What inspired this story?Audrey Zhou: This story started with an idea I had nearly a year […]
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