2025 year end editorial

2025 in review

  • Submissions window info: in addition to general submissions windows, we also opened to submissions for seasonal stories, our annual Banned Books Week event, flash fiction, and a limited-demographic window for Young Authors.
  • We will have published 43 stories over 41 episodes – a total of over 140,000 words. 27 stories were original, and 16 were reprints.
  • We also produced ten re-issue episodes (9 Staff Pick stories, 1 Encore story)
  • This year we published two stories by Young Authors, and were the first publication credit for a number of other authors. We have some great fiction by young authors already lined up for 2026!

You can access all our 2025 original fiction at this link. At the end of December, we’ll be releasing our Staff Picks from 2025.

We welcomed several new associate editors to the team: Adri Joy, Kit Caelsto, Elinor Wahl and Angela Zazueta.

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A girl's feet in pink trainers next to the shrouded feet of a grim reaper

Genres: ,

Cast of Wonders 666: The Mall Reapers

Cast of Wonders 666: The Mall Reapers is a Cast of Wonders original.

Content notes: attempted suicide, eye trauma

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:26 — 33.6MB)

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Show Notes

Image by Darelle from Pixabay

The Mall Reapers

by Daniel Roop

The second time I died, when I was fifteen, I didn’t. Mama and I had been arguing about the usual things, including my black eye shadow and mascara and how it “made me look awful pretty for a corpse.” I’d stormed off to my room in the back of our trailer in a huff, and she just stayed in the living room and drank coffee and smoked at the rickety brown table next to the stove so the vent would siphon off the smell. I threw myself on my bed and pulled the covers over my head, trying not to smudge the eye shadow. In fairness to her, I did cake it on back then. I laid there and listened to Concrete Blonde and The Cure and mumbled the lyrics into my black comforter. I was pretty dramatic in those days, and that along with the Crow’d up outfits didn’t help me fit in much in our little town in Scruggs County, Tennessee. I only knew three things for sure: I hated my life, I hated this place, and I was never, ever going to get out of here. This smoky trailer, this rutted gravel road, this hemmed-in Appalachian horizon was the only one I would ever see. So, I butchered a few more songs, earnestly at least, and then Mom called, “Elsie!”—it’s hard to be goth when you’re named Elsie—“Elsie, come look at this!” (Continue Reading…)

cornfield, oak tree, blue sky with water ripples on it

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Cast of Wonder 665: A Siren Stranded in a Sea of Grass

Cast of Wonder 665: A Siren Stranded in a Sea of Grass is a Cast of Wonders original.

Content note: transphobia and queerphobia, family intolerance

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:39 — 36.6MB)

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Show Notes

Episode art adapted from an image by Ralf Kunze from Pixabay

Some links: The Trevor Project // Stonewall // Good Law Project support links // Global Action for Trans Equality

A Siren Stranded in a Sea of Grass

by Courtney Farr

1. Sowing

The Great Plains can be disorientatingly flat, feeling more akin to the distant oceans than to the forests or mountains of neighboring states. In a tiny oasis anchored by a gnarled old bur oak, two friends lay on a plaid blanket, the ripening wheat spreading out from them as far as the eye could see. The tree once identified the border between two fields, before GPS, satellites and computer mapping rendered the old markers unnecessary.

“I thought sirens lived in the sea?” the farm boy asked his companion. (Continue Reading…)

historic nevada town

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Cast of Wonders 664: Blood and Talent

Cast of Wonders 664: Blood and Talent is a Cast of Wonders original.

Content notes: injury, violence, historical racism, domestic violence, death

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 56:05 — 77.0MB)

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Blood and Talent

by Jamie M. Boyd

William Bird was sweeping up at the end of the day when a white man barreled into his barbershop like a runaway stagecoach. The man carried a mess of a younger fella in his arms and cried out, “Help, he needs the Touch!”

When Bird saw the gaping stomach wound, his first thought was another mining accident. He motioned to the cot in the back, raised his hand and tried to staunch the flow of blood with his mind. Energy drained from him like water and traveled into the young man. It crackled and branched and–oh.

Bird went cold as his eyes flew open. He could feel the lacerations, trace them where they were too blood-saturated to see. And this was no gash made from explosives. It’d been inflicted by magic. (Continue Reading…)

stylised silhouette of a yacht

Genres:

Cast of Wonders 663: The Pequod II

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:59 — 19.2MB)

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Show Notes

Image adapted by Katherine Inskip from an image by Kaskar 537 from Pixabay

The Pequod II

by Liam Hogan

The catamaran skims over the waters of Altair III. A shimmering shoal of native fish race to keep us company, breaching as arrow-headed darts. Though the day is perfect for sailing, it is tinged with sadness. This is the last voyage of the Pequod.

Even with nothing but the horizon to see, voices chirp in my ear, rightfully worried I might dawdle. One of those voices, adding solemn instruction, is alien. Vantarian. Bailiffs, come to oversee our eviction. (Continue Reading…)

spooky image of warped silhouetted hands

Genres:

Cast of Wonders 662: It Grows Back

Cast of Wonders 662: It Grows Back is a Cast of Wonders original.

Broken bones, body horror, monster under the bed.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:35 — 40.6MB)

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Show Notes

Artwork adapted from an image by Nick Magwood from Pixabay

It Grows Back

by Grant Collier

When Billy was four, a tall construction man’s arm broke beside the street. Billy was dog-walking with Mom, and the tall man was there, and the big block of cinder—it fell with a cronk, thudding onto the man’s arm, which was too-tall now, and pulsing, with an extra elbow that went the wrong way. The man screamed, and Billy screamed back—their voices touched, and that turned Billy’s arm to jelly, too, and made the butterflies inside him try to lick their way out with their little mouths. He looked away, but the tall man with the too-tall arm was still in his thoughts, and he couldn’t get him out.

It happened for years, mostly when Billy slept. There were long, dark hallways, and the too-tall arm man would be there, and he would shuffle at Billy. Not quickly: he knew Billy couldn’t get away. The hallways were too crooked (like an arm), and they never bent the way Billy expected. The man just shuffled slowly, until Billy turned a corner, and he was out of sight, and then he would scramble fast to get close, and coming around the corner he would have even more arms, with even more bends where there should be none. (Continue Reading…)

artwork of stems of red roses

Genres: ,

Cast of Wonders 661: Bloom Like Roses, Wild And Thorned

Cast of Wonders 661: Bloom Like Roses, Wild And Thorned is a Cast of Wonders original.

CW: abusive relationships, themes of domestic violence

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:00:03 — 82.5MB)

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Show Notes

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

Bloom Like Roses, Wild and Thorned

by Jessica Lévai

Perhaps you’ve heard the tale of a poor merchant who set out to seek his fortune, leaving his daughter home with the promise of a rose. There was a storm. There was a castle. There was a Beast.

The merchant spends most nights down at the tavern. Buy him a drink and he’ll tell you the whole story, or as much as he cares to remember. He’ll tell you how he reached the castle just in time, how invisible servants catered to his every need, how he was safe at last. At first. Until the rose. (Continue Reading…)

palm leaves against the milky way

Genres:

Cast of Wonders 660: For Future Generations

First published in Khōréō, May 2021

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:18 — 41.6MB)

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For Future Generations

by Rachel Gutin

Of all the Jewish holidays, Sukkot was the hardest to celebrate in space. Rabbi Greenberg had been a young child when her family boarded the generation ship, but she still had vivid memories of celebrating Sukkot back on Earth. The swish-snap of the tall, skinny lulav as she shook it back and forth, its flat green leaves packed tightly against its spine. The tangy-sweet smell of the bumpy yellow etrog, a bit too round for her little hands to hold securely.

The sukkah that her family built behind their house every year, with its thin metal frame, and its canvas walls, and its ceiling of bamboo slats and cut branches. The pride she’d felt when her father finally allowed her to help him assemble it, collecting branches for the roof or fastening the ties that secured the walls. It let in the cold, the heat, the rain, but also the sunlight that dappled every surface as her family sat inside to eat together.

The acid tang in the air that last Sukkot, the way the colors looked all wrong, as the world began to die around them.

They boarded the ship a week later. They left the sukkah standing when they fled. There wasn’t any way to bring it with them. (Continue Reading…)

Genres: ,

Cast of Wonders 659: The Archive of Unnamed Joy

Cast of Wonders 659: The Archive of Unnamed Joy is a Cast of Wonders original.

CW: dystopia, authoritarianism, brainwashing

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:44 — 55.9MB)

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The Archive of Unnamed Joy

by Bella Chacha

On the day my best friend forgot how to laugh, the sky over Lagos turned a dusty gold, like the gods were sifting garri over the sun.

Kambili had always been the one to pull joy out of thin air: snapping her fingers into a rhythm that made our feet twitch, making jokes out of government warnings, drawing flying cats with glowing eyes on the back of her school reports. But that morning, she just sat there at assembly, eyes vacant, lips sealed tight, her laughter gone like it had been folded up and hidden inside someone else’s pocket.

“Mood correction successful,” the hall monitor announced in that soulless mechanical tone, tapping her brass baton twice on the concrete. Around us, the students kept silent, unmoving. Stillness was virtue. Stillness was law. Stillness meant safety. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 658: Your Hold is Ready

Cast of Wonders 658: Your Hold is Ready is a Cast of Wonders original.

homophobia, censorship, fascist dystopia

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 15:02 — 20.6MB)

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Your Hold Is Ready

by Laura Duerr

The news is spreading. We try to keep working through our English tests, but it’s becoming impossible to focus. Laughter and drumming call us to join the crowds on the streets, as irresistible as Odysseus’ sirens. I imagine myself tied to my desk chair, ears plugged up with wax instead of noise-canceling headphones, and chuckle to myself.

Mr. Lanigan leans around his monitor. “Molly, did you just giggle?”

“Possibly?”

Two storeys down, the crowd erupts with cheering. The students nearest the windows peer out wistfully. So does Mr. Lanigan. He ought to be retired by now, but he’s still here, and we’re glad. He’s kept a lot of our secrets and we’ve kept his. At first it was weird to watch out for someone so much older than us, but he stood up for us every chance he got, and somehow, together, our ordinary classroom discussions became outlets for us to be ourselves: to give voice to the dreams and hopes that had miraculously survived not just high school, but high school under all this.

(Continue Reading…)

Genres:

Cast of Wonders 657: Plutopalooza

First published in Nature Futures, 13 March 2024

End of the world

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:11 — 18.1MB)

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Plutopalooza

by Gretchen Tessmer

Tess and Gemma have been camped out on their tartan picnic blanket for days already and they plan on staying until the very end…of the concert or the world, whichever happens first. Smart money is on the latter. The way those lads are going at their bass lines and anthems up on stage, they’re in this until the lights go out for good. (Continue Reading…)

Genres:

Cast of Wonders 656: Unconventionally Bound

Cast of Wonders 656: Unconventionally Bound is a Cast of Wonders original.

Aftermath of a fire

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 14:08 — 19.4MB)

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Unconventionally Bound

by Açai Sparrow

With ash-stained gloves, I ease another book free of the charred shelf. Deckle sneezes at the burnt leather, but she guided me to this one for a reason. Despite the sorry state of the cover, the pages look to be mostly intact.

The next book is much worse off, and I can barely identify it. Still, I can feel Deckle’s certainty through our bond. One of next year’s students will need it.

I nearly trip over the book after that; it must have fallen at some point. It takes a bit of doing to retrieve it, Deckle tucking herself under my arm as I lower myself to the floor. The edges of her scales leave raised red lines on my skin. They’ve been getting sharper; I should probably get around to getting a reinforced sleeve soon. The book’s cover crumbles a little when I pick it up, and I get the feeling some of the pages are damaged, but none fall out, so it can probably be repaired. As inappropriate as it may be, I’m excited by the task ahead. It will be refreshing, compared to assembling new covers or making whole replacement copies. (Continue Reading…)