Issue 98 – VAGABOND CITY

Now Read This: August 2026

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators When Paris Whispers by Marianne C. Bohr Twenty-two-year-old Catrine arrives in Paris, the city she’s dreamed of since childhood, and it speaks back-but not in ways she expected. Drifting through the streets of 1981 Paris, the voices of French writers she once read in solitude whisper back, […]

Everything, Issue 121, Issue 98, Now Read This

Now Read This: July 2026

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Lightning in Our Roots by Avis Blackbird In Lightning in Our Roots, Avis Blackbird invites the reader on a journey to feel Indigenous fluidity of space and time, the impact of colonization, enduring connections to the land, lived urbanized experience, and finally the rising hope of Indigenous […]

Everything, Issue 120, Issue 98, Now Read This

Now Read This: June 2026

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators GOLDEN SHRAPNEL by Almir Imširević (translated by Ellen Elias-Bursać) At a remove from Sarajevo, on a writer’s residency in France, a playwright finds himself in the thrall of echoes from the past — in a labyrinth of siege-time references. This is not an ordinary memoir, but […]

Everything, Issue 119, Issue 98, Now Read This

Now Read This: May 2026

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Gold Star by Emma McKenna Drawn from the experience of growing up in poverty in a single-parent home and escaping to the city at the age of sixteen, these poems look at the physical and emotional implications of trauma but also reveal how being bisexual and […]

Everything, Issue 118, Issue 98, Now Read This

Now Read This: April 2026

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators All Us Beautiful Monsters by Alex Lemon Having extensively detailed his experience with a traumatic brain injury, Alex Lemon writes with the remarkable ability to transform the depth of pain into brilliant light. His enthralling new collection charts a visual map of the sprawling mind, translating […]

Everything, Issue 116, Issue 98, Now Read This

Now Read This: February 2026

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Do you have a lit journal issue, chapbook, book, or other work that’s about to be published? Email us at vagabondcityliterary@gmail.com to be added to our Books Available to Review list and/or featured on an upcoming Now Read This list.

Everything, Issue 115, Issue 98, Now Read This

Now Read This: January 2026

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Cancer Courts My Mother by LindaAnn LoSchiavo “Cancer Courts My Mother” gives voice to the creativity borne out of the experience of late-stage cancer from the perspective of a caregiver and a daughter. Written with candor, warmth, and grace, these poems explore universal themes of sorrow, […]

Everything, Issue 114, Issue 98, Now Read This

Now Read This | December 2025

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators We Are Green and Trembling by Gabriela https://www.ndbooks.com/book/we-are-green-and-trembling/Cabezón Cámara and Translated by Robin Myers Deep in the wilds of the New World, Antonio de Erauso begins to write a letter to his aunt, the prioress of the Basque convent he escaped as a young girl. Since […]

Everything, issue 111, Issue 98, Now Read This

Now Read This: September 2025

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Peppermint by Amber Isaac “And I was taught not to use certain words in poems / but sometimes I act undisciplined to feel better” Amber states in the opening poem of Peppermint. Through cutting matter-of-fact language, Peppermint is a reel of personal lore: a childhood on a farm in […]

Everything, Issue 110, Issue 98, Now Read This

Now Read This: August 2025

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators On Remembering My Friends, My First Job, and My Second-Favorite Weezer CD by Francisco Delgado When his son uncovers a Weezer CD at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cody Taitano recalls his first job at McDonald’s during his senior year of high school. Back in […]

Everything, Issue 109, Issue 98, Now Read This

Now Read This: July 2025

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Poetry Is Not a Luxury: Poems for All Seasons by Anonymous Inspired by writer and philosopher Audre Lorde’s famous claim: “Poetry is not a luxury,” this anthology proves the vitality of poetry as a crucial source of inspiration, comfort, and delight. In a first section, “Summer,” […]

Everything, Issue 98, Now Read This

Now Read This: June 2025

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators The Blue Door by Janice Deal Is a parent responsible for a child who commits a crime? If so, how can she deal with that burden? These are the questions that haunt Flo when her daughter Teddy plans to visit after a long separation. The prospect […]

Everything, Issue 98, Now Read This

Now Read This: May 2025

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators The Nothing by Lauren Davis The Nothing, Lauren Davis’s debut fiction collection, exists on the whisper between reality and illusion. Think Shirley Jackson’s characters stuck in the damp Pacific Northwest or an Olympic Peninsula funhouse mirror held up to Karen Russell’s Florida. The worlds Davis creates […]

Everything, issue 106, Issue 98, Now Read This

Now Read This: April 2025

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators When Whales Went Back to the Water by Lisa Baird Steely, tender, and sensual, Lisa Baird’s When Whales Went Back to the Water creates a reverent container for a broken world. These poems are hymns to living in wonder through loss, joy, motherhood’s sleepless nights, domestic violence, and […]

Everything, issue 105, Issue 98, Now Read This

Now Read This: March 2025

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Pause the Document by Mónica de la Torre As the world shuts down, Mónica de la Torre’s poems become gregarious sites of encounter—homages to connections lost and new bonds forged. Shuttling between lyrical and experimental modes, the poems in Pause the Document challenge linear notions of time by […]

Everything, issue 104, Issue 98, Now Read This

Now Read This: Feburary 2025

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators Beyond the Watershed by Nadia Alexis A hybrid collection of poetry and photography, Beyond the Watershed explores the various experiences of a Haitian American daughter and her Haitian immigrant mother. Nadia Alexis crafts a moving portrayal of generational trauma, domestic violence, survival, and reclamation using stunning […]

Everything, issue 103, Issue 98, Now Read This

Now Read This: January 2025

Everything, issue 100, Issue 98, Now Read This

Now Read This: October 2024

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators No One Knows Their Blood Type by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat (Translated by Hazem Jamjoum) No One Knows Their Blood Type is a novel of identity, belonging, and conflicting truths—of stories, secrets, songs, rumors, and lies. On the day that her father dies, Jumana makes a discovery […]

Everything, Issue 98, Now Read This

Now Read This: September 2024

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators DEED by torrin a. greathouse DEED, the follow-up to torrin a. greathouse’s 2022 Kate Tufts Discovery Award winning debut, Wound from the Mouth of a Wound, is a formally and lyrically innovative exploration of queer sex and desire, and what it can cost. Sprawling across art, eros, […]

Everything, Issue 98, Poetry

Roadside by Laura Boaggio

I left my jacket in the woods one day & cried when I realized I came back to the spot a few days later & there it was, hung on a tree like a coat rack all over it,spiders had nestedin the fabric / hiding from the cold October air every time I lose something I feel so small but at least the mistakes I made have kept […]

Everything, Issue 98, Poetry

Aphrodite Says Yes To Me by Artemis Adams

after Kaylin Haught I asked God if it was okay to like other girls and he said absolutely not I asked Aphrodite if it was okay to like other girls and she said of course I asked God if it was okay that I take a break from going to church and he said never I asked Aphrodite if it was […]

Everything, Issue 98, Poetry

Hold Steady in the Aldi Parking Lot by Gabriel Welsch

Craig, you’re killing me. You singthat flavor we all still taste, the way you start drinking coffee black to live past middle age and there is a nuttyquality, a sweetness not sugar but somethingmore true, reminding you coffeecomes from a fruit, and you know what’s not good for us and evoke those old pick-up-truck-in-a-field parties as something like […]

Everything, Issue 98, Poetry

A COMPLETE LIST, DISCOVERED BY THE AUTHOR THROUGH MANY YEARS OF EARNEST CONTEMPLATION, OF ALL OF THE MOMENTS IN LIFE (AND ONLY THOSE MOMENTS) THAT ARE SIMULTANEOUSLY SUBLIME AND TRAGIC by Geoffrey Wessel

When you see a bird flying. All others. Geoffrey Wessel is an American diplomat and amateur philosopher who enjoys thunderstorms and once translated the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights into 720 lines of iambic pentameter. He holds degrees from the University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill and the London School of Economics. He lives […]

Everything, Issue 98, Reviews + Interviews

In Review: Barbara Harris Leonhard’s Three-Penny Memories: a Poetic Memoir

One thing a reader is struck by in this sequence of poems, divided into sections, is how well each poem stands on its own. This book is about a mother, a daughter, a family, and a mother-daughter bond, bears, like other good books, the stamp of necessity. What sets it apart is particulars, its individuality, […]

Everything, Issue 98, Opportunities for Artists & Writers

Opportunities for Artists and Writers | August 2024

FERAL Journal is currently accepting poetry and art submissions for its upcoming unthemed issue. Send 1-4 poems in one DOC, DOCX, or PDF or 1-10 JPG or PNG pieces as an email attachment to feralpoetryandart@gmail.com. Also provide name and pronouns in email, but a cover letter is not required. Deadline: August 31st Just Femme & […]

Everything, Issue 98, Now Read This

Now Read This: August 2024

Highlighting recently released and forthcoming works by marginalized creators You Could Be That Kind of Girl: stories by Téa Franco Frida Kahlo resurrects as a social media influencer, a girl feeds all of her food to a bloom of angry ladybugs, a skunk funeral makes a young woman contemplate her life and more in Téa […]

Art, Everything, Issue 98

An Interview with Channie Greenberg

Through her photography, this month’s artist, Channie Greenberg, seeks to capture “not only what’s ‘interesting,’ but also what’s beautiful” with her lens. Citing “gratitude” as one of the most significant driving forces behind her work, Greenberg’s photos feature both the natural wonders of “Creation” as well as “man-made items” that catch her eye. With an […]

Everything, Fiction, Issue 98, Prose

Sweet Adulthood by Veera Laitinen

You are a grown-up, so you fill your new bathtub with Legos and Coca Cola and go to your kitchen—which is also the bedroom and the living room and the hallway—and fetch the bowl of cookie dough. You sit in your stew of sugar and plastic and wolf down the dough in fistfuls. You let […]