Spring has come to the Northern Hemisphere, and that means the birds are singing, the plants are blooming, and there's more great fiction and poetry to read! Spring is a time of renewal, a time of opening back up after the claustrophobia of winter, but it's not all sunshine and puppy dogs. A spectre is haunting us, like Marx and Engels said, but instead of communism, it's the deep and abiding dread of the climate crisis knocking on our doors. The March issue therefore is a special one, what we call our DRY ISSUE, and it's full of stories and poems meant to evoke a vision of a changing world, an clarion call of catastrophe and hope. Here are the sins of our past and the bright songs of a painful and glorious future.

In this issue, you will find fiction by E.M. Linden, Ai Jiang, Crystal Lynn Hilbert, and Lucero Valdovinos, poetry by Temidayo Okun, Abdulkareem Abdulkareem, and P. H. Low, and short fiction reviews by Danai Christopoulou. Cover art is by Aimee Cozza.

Haven Spec Magazine is now a pro-paying market! We’re grateful to everyone who supported our Kickstarter, and we are so glad to be able to give our wonderful authors the rates that they deserve. We have big plans for 2024, including interviews with some amazing editors, stories from across the width and breadth of the human experience, and short fiction reviews from your very own Haven Spec staff (okay, mostly Danai). I very much want Haven Spec to be a part of the wider SFF community, and that means paying people what they deserve, shouting out the stories and magazines we love, and publishing as much awesome fiction and poetry as we possibly can.

In this issue, you will find fiction by Melissa A Watkins, Thomas Ha, T. K. Rex, Sophia Adamowicz, and Dana Berube, poetry by Russell Nichols, Matthew Roy, A.J. Van Belle, and Anna Quercia-Thomas, and short fiction reviews by Danai Christopoulou. The beautiful cover art is by Carly A-F.

Issue Twelve is here!

We've got:

Fiction by Monte Lin, Richard Ford Burley, Elisabeth Kauffman, Karen Aria Lin, Elizabeth Broadbent, and Karl Dandenell!

Poetry by Wen Yu Yang, Shana Ross, H.V. Patterson, Goran Lowie, Anna Madden, Archita Mittra, Brian Hugenbruch, G.E. Woods, Elis Montgomery, Maria Schrater, and Elizabeth R McClellan!

Read the entire issue now!

Issue Eleven is here!

We've got:

Fiction by T. R. Siebert, James Parenti, Rajeev Prasad, Natalie Kikić, and A. R. Frederiksen!

Poetry by Sandra Pope, Connie La-Huynh, Gretchen Tessmer, • R L • powell, and Rebecca A. Demarest!

Read the entire issue now!

Issue Ten is here!

We've got:

Fiction by Amanda Haimoto Rudd, Lindsey Duncan, Dana Vickerson, Marissa Lingen, Lynne Sargent, and AD Sui!

Poetry by Sodïq Oyèkànmí, Kevin Martens Wong, Avra Margariti, Mark A. Fisher, and S. T. Eleu!

Read the entire issue now!

Issue Nine is here!

We've got:

Fiction by Jessica Cho, Timothy Johnson, KT Wagner, André Geleynse, Anne Marie Lutz, and Mike Morgan!

Poetry by Marcus Whalbring, Marisca Pichette, Anton Cancre, L. Acadia, Tania Chen, Colleen Anderson, and Eva Papasoulioti!

Read the entire issue now!

Issue Eight is here!

We've got:

Fiction by Valo Wing, Taylor Grothe, Carol Scheina, Paul Michael Anderson, and Jenna Glover!

Poetry by Monica Louzon, Anuja Mitra, Crystal Sidell, and Jessica Peter!

Read the entire issue now!

Issue seven is here! We've got:

Fiction by Danai Christopoulou, Moustapha Mbacké Diop, Erin K. Wagner, Warren Benedetto, David Farrow, Andi C. Buchanan, Rhiannon Rasmussen, Frances Koziar, and Austin Shirey!

Poetry by Jennifer Crow, Overcomer Ibiteye, Beth Cato, J.D. Harlock, Sarah Cannavo, Ashley Gilland, Lin Darrow, Gary Bloom, and Tiffany Morris!

The first half of the issue is available to read for free on the website right this very second, and the second half will become available on 12/5!

Issue Six is here! We've got fiction by Anya Ow, Anna Madden, Roderick Leeuwenhart, Corey Farrenkopf, and Liam Hogan, plus poetry by Vanessa Jae, the_people, RC deWinter, Devin Miller, and Annika Barranti Klein.

Because this is our very first WET ISSUE, we're releasing all of the content for free, so you can start reading it right this very moment! So, strap in for selkies and sea monsters, the end of the world and the very beginning, cannibalism and so much more!

If you like the issue, please consider grabbing a copy at our ko-fi shop to support us or subscribing through our patreon, and don't forget to keep an eye out for our upcoming Kickstarter too!

Issue Five is here! Join us at the world's spookiest traveling exhibit in "You Hope, Through Shivers and Sweat" by Elou Carroll or sit in on a book club with a very selective membership in "The Book Club at the End of the World" by Elizabeth Zuckerman. You might also consider how music connects us and what we owe to each other in P.A. Cornell's "Vinyl Wisdom," settle in for a tale of the four gentrifiers of the apocalypse in D.K. Lawhorn's "We, Downtown," or tinker in Brandon Crilly's "Constructed" with the relics of a fallen past, with hope in your heart those days will come again.

For poetry, feel the heat on your back in "Beneath the Flames" by Oyeleye Mahmoodah Temitope or sing out to those still trapped in the tower in Vanessa Fogg’s "Blood, Roses, Song." We’ve also got a new piece full of ritual and decay in the form of "We Greet the Solstice" by Avra Margariti, a meditation on the hellfires at the end of the world in "Introspection" by Alexander Etheridge, and an interrogation of space exloration in "The Artemis Accords*" by Lynne Sargent.

This issue came together around concerns of the personal and the domestic, from the found family and magic of the truth in "The Calligrapher's Granddaughter" by Stewart C Baker to the physical toll of grief and loss in pieces like Elise Stephens's "Focal Point" and Jelena Dunato's "Heart of My Heart, Soul of My Soul." For something more capital-W Weird/body horror-y, we also have "Axolotol" by Atreyee Gupta, about body doubles and never feeling like you're enough, and Rebecca Angelo's "Resistant," in which Clark has a very bad day at the hands of the mind-source.

For poetry, you might consider the bleak wonder of Nnadi Samuel's "A Wreckful Planting of Small Pockets of Thirst" and Julie Allyn Johnson's "Behemoth," stare at the lights through your first floor apartment in Melissa Ridley Elmes's "Every Light a Threshold," or sink into the roots of pieces like "Tall Tales" by F. J. Bergmann and "Unearthen" by Carly Racklin aand cover yourself over with soil.

Issue Three is now available! This is our very first DRY ISSUE, bringing you all the latest and greatest fiction and poetry dealing with the hotter aspects of the climate crisis. In stories like "Sworn Guardian" by Kimberly Christensen and "Hope: A Perspective from the Forest" by Tadayoshi Kohno, you'll find the ravages of fire burning through the forests and all the ways the creatures of this world, human and otherwise, fight back.

You might also pull up a chair at the Cambridge University archives on the hottest day in July in Meghan Kemp-Gee's "The End of the World," or consider exploring what happens when the water at last runs out and all we have left is our thirst in stories like "For the Remnants" by Belicia Rhea and "Chrysanthemum" by Erin Keating.

For poetry, you can dive into a world of mosquitos and fever dreams in "sestina for the summer solstice" by Claire McNerney, watch as the nymphs hightail it as the world around them withers and burns in "The Nymphs Are Migrating" by Madalena Daleziou, or stare into the void the Earth's become, "an embarrassing mess that no // one // wants to clean // up" in Marisca Pichette's "And it dries and dries."

Issue Two is now available! In this issue, we have street kids trying their best to survive in Emmie Christie's "Touched" and the voice of the moors and the restless who are buried there in "We Are the Moor," written by Sylvia Heike and first published in Flash Fiction Online. Both stories are available now to read for free on our website!

We also have more terrific fiction in "Carolina" by Michael Haynes, "Lovey" by Christi Nogle, and "My Sparkle Alone Can't Cull Your Demons" by Eric Farrell, together with poetry by Avra Margariti in "Misconceptions Regarding the Moon," which considers the moon and all the magic there. These will be available to read for free on February 9th, but if you just can't wait, then you should feel free to snag a copy of the January/February issue through patreon or ko-fi today!

Issue One is finally here! Pick up a copy to reading stunning tales of mayhem and merriment, from a jewelry heist gone wrong in Dawn Vogel's "The Shell Game" to the front lines of the howler war with João F. Silva in "The Cavalry." If poetry is more your speed, listen when the trees speak in "Ascenkin's Roots" by Ai Jiang and follow the wolves in Thomas Zimmerman's "Wolf Rune" to hear their song too.

We have wonderful fiction by Gabrielle Johansen and Annika Barranti Klein already available to read on our website, and the rest of the issue will go up on December 7th. But if you just can't wait to dive into A.T. Sayre's Weird-with-a-capital-W story "The Spot" about a man whose stomach begins to glow or Brian Hugenbruch's sonnet "The Opposite of Time," which takes us into the tempered void and beyond, then feel free to snag a copy through patreon or ko-fi!

Haven Spec is a brand new online magazine publishing science fiction and fantasy stories and poems for the 21st century. We publish six issues a year, and we welcome diverse voices from around the world. Two of our issues will be focused on the climate crisis (see our guidelines for more!), and otherwise our issues will run the gamut of the SFF and weird spectra.

So grab a copy of Issue Zero (it's free!) and discover tales of magic powers passed down through the generations in "The Putnam Tradition" by Sonya Dorman, or what happens when pyramid schemes get out of hand in "The Snowball Effect" by Katherine MacLean! If poetry is more your speed, then check out "The Frozen Ocean" by Viola Meynell, in which the wide ocean takes a page from Bartleby the Scrivener, crosses its arms, and tells the world I would prefer not to.