Renée Sarojini Saklikar

In this issue Follow cover artist Akem's Selfie into myth and mystery with 'The Tales of Fanon and Gavroche' by feature author Ren e Sarojini Saklikar. Make connections over seemingly impossible gulfs with 'Downwelling' by D Marmara and 'M4R1NR' by Mike Carson, and discover what the nighttime holds in Mel Anastasiou's 'Moonlight Over Paradise Gardens' and Part 4 of 'Their Grandfather's Chair' by JM Landels. Fly away with a gorgeous mischief of three very different Magpies by Pattie Palmer-Baker, Angela Rebrec, and Elizabeth Cockle, and then come home to nest with Sierra Louie's elfin adventurer in 'If I Could Hide Away Anywhere'. Have a stiff drink with Melissa Ren at 'The Midnight Diyu', or pick a potion with Lena Ng in 'The Curse of the Chattering Skull', while you mingle uncomfortably with strangers in Mitchell Toews's 'The Light Pool' and William Kitcher's 'I Can't Tell You That'.

Feature author Ren e Sarojini Saklikar treats us to a Bramah and the Beggar Boy side tale in prose and poetry. We welcome back Cadence Mandybura, and enjoy slipstream and superheroes from Patrick Barb and Tom Jolly. Mel Anastasiou offers more Pretty Lies and JM Landels shows us the other side of the mirror in 'Zara's Song'. Plus the winners of the Hummingbird Flash Fiction Prize

One afternoon, in an old house in an abandoned village on the outskirts of Perimeter, in the place they call Pacifica, Bramah and the beggar boy find fragments of an ancient text. Hunched over scraps of parchment and broken computer disks, they blow the dust off a cover, and so our story begins. Many things happen--some good, but mostly bad--including five eco-catastrophes and a viral bio-contagion. Steeped in the tradition of fairy tales, THOT J BAP (The Heart of This Journey Bears All Patterns) is a map-history of a world in which a small band of eco-survivors faces heartbreak and destruction. Speculative fiction meets rhymes and chants, soulful characters and a playful reimagining of the saga as a portent for our planet earth. Shapeshifting in and out of it all is the nimble Bramah, a female locksmith--brown, brave and beautiful. Ten years in the making and described as "truly ambitious" by Stephen Collis, this work by award-winning poet Ren e Sarojini Saklikar spans continents and centuries. Bramah and the Beggar Boy is the first instalment of the multi-part series.

Our journey begins under the gaze of The Faery Godmother by cover artist Ashley Rose Goentoro. We step into a ghost story 'Man with Golden Helmet' by feature author Ren e Sarojini Saklikar. Dawn Lo in 'Little Snowflake Girls' and Weiwei Xu in 'Chimera' introduce us to young people exploring meaningful questions of identity and belonging. Like trailside inukshuks, memories pile up and tumble away in 'Moons of Saturn' by James Dorr, 'Practising the Art of Forgetting' by Soramimi Hanarejima, and 'Starry Nights' by David Milne. AJ Lee, in 'What Kind of Story', and Magpie winners Charlene Kwiatkowski, Maria Ford, and Cara Waterfall delight with their bewitching words. Solutions to two very different puzzles emerge with Susan Pieters in 'Hoax' and Cameron MacDonald in 'Mourgadze'. Whether by way of closet or carriage, keeping safe means keeping up appearances for Frankie Ray in 'The Sleuth with the Platinum Hair' by Mel Anastasiou and Toinette in 'The Shepherdess: Versailles' by JM Landels.

children of air india is a series of elegiac sequences exploring the nature of individual loss, situated within public trauma. The work is animated by a proposition: that violence, both personal and collective, produces continuing sonar, an echolocation that finds us, even when we choose to be unaware or indifferent. This collection breaks new ground in its approach to the saga that is Canada/Air India, an event and its aftermath that is both over-reported and under-represented in our national psyche.329 deaths. 82 Children. Canada's worst mass murder. The accused acquitted. What does it mean to be Canadian and lose someone in Air India Flight 182? Why does 9/11 resonate more strongly with Canadians than June 23, 1985? The poems in this book search out answers in the "everything/ness and nothing/ness" of an act and its aftermath, revealing a voice that re-defines and re-visions. Air India never happened. Air India always happens.