VIDA Review, and
LIT Magazine, and her stories have been recognized by the Black Warrior Review Contest, the Los Angeles Review Literary Awards, the CRAFT Elements Contest, and the Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Contest, as well as being named Longform Fiction Pick of the Week. Find her at gina-chung.com. An excerpt from her story “Human Hearts” can be found here. It appears in the May/June 2021 issue of the
What was your original impetus for writing “Human Hearts”?
I’ve always been drawn to the myth of the kumiho, or Korean fox spirit. Unlike other East Asian fox spirit archetypes, such as the kitsune, the kumiho is almost always seen as malignant and monstrous. Like many female monsters, she is seen as a threat to the patriarchal order because of her agency, power, and ability to take what she needs from men and destroy them. With this story, I wanted to explore what it would be like to be an atypical kumiho to be a powerful, immortal being who is, at the same time
Contributors’ Notes
Hussain Ahmed is a Nigerian poet and environmentalist. His poems and translations are featured or forthcoming in
Poetry,
AzonaL,
Sara Backer’s first book of poetry,
Such Luck (Flowstone Press, 2019), follows two poetry chapbooks:
Scavenger Hunt (dancing girl press, 2018) and
Bicycle Lotus (Left Fork, 2015). Her honors include the 2019 Plough Poetry Prize competition, eight Pushcart nominations, and fellowships from the Norton Island and Djerassi Resident Artists Programs. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, lives in New Hampshire, and reads for the
Maine Review. Point,
Marianne Boruch’s tenth book of poetry is
The Anti-Grief (Copper Canyon Press, 2019). She has written three essay collections about poetry, most recently