Psychopomp

In the introduction to her collection, River of Bones, Rebecca Roanhorse asks the questions, “What do we owe our ancestors, what do we owe our history, and what do we owe ourselves?” Impossibly big questions that thread a relationship between historical obligation, love, and retribution.

Shingai Njeri Kagunda sat down with author Rebecca Roanhorse, and while this interview was planned for issue #100 of Fantasy Magazine, that did not come to pass. By the miracle of the internet, here it is for you, dear reader. —ECT Shingai Njeri Kagunda: Hello Rebecca, it is such a delight to be engaging with you and your creative process in this way.

So now we come to the end of the road, wrote Babyface, Reid, and Simmons in the 90s, and so it is true here, that Psychopomp arrives at the end of a publishing road (can we publish books people love? Oh yes. Can we make enough money to continue? Oh no.). But what a way to go out—a haunted house that is not remotely familiar to you. You have not walked these haunted halls. You don’t know what’s in that basement, I promise you don’t.

You may have read about Psychopomp’s recent reorg, but we are still doing Afterlives 2025: The Year’s Best Death Stories! Instead of having open subs for authors, we are asking editors to send the deathly stories they published. If you are a writer who had story about death published in 2025, please be in touch with your editor and ask them to send it to us! We have sent submission info to editors, but may not have reached every single editor, it’s true.

On September 17, 2024, FROM THESE DARK ABODES arrived in its skeletal glory, and one year later, we are here to celebrate—with bones. ASSEMBLE SKELETONS! COLOR! GRAB THIS handy-dandy PDF, filled with activity and coloring pages by our very own inkshark. PUT THE BOOK IN YOUR EYES! ebooks are ON SALE! For a mere $1.99, you can find out what the fuss is all about.

2025 was a year of big changes around here, and we can’t imagine where 2026 will take us. Before we do, let’s look back at what we did in 2025. We did some stuff! The Deadlands is eligible for the Locus Award for Best Magazine, British Fantasy Award for Best Magazine/Periodical, and the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine.

DECEMBER 2025, SHORT STORY, 4400 WORDS When your skin peels away from your loosening flesh in coils, trailing soft, brown ribbons in its wake, your lovers swathe you in cotton-gauze and bring you to the sea. This is how it begins. On a searing Tuesday when the heat whorls outward from under your armpits, on the day that love slides under your entrails, on the day that everything changes, you decide to go dancing with your roommates from the New Era Ladies Hostel.

DECEMBER 2025, FLASH, 900 WORDS “How do we tell her?” Glee asked as we stood on the side of the interstate, pavement torn into tattered hunks, trees sprouting from exposed dirt. Guardrails had rusted to complete copper, stretches of metal crumbling to pavement, lying like dying snakes beneath the sun’s glare. “I’m not sure it’s our place,” I told my daughter. “The whole death thing must be rough already.

Who do you see as your literary heroes, and why? In terms of writing style, I love Mary Shelley and Jane Austen—I like the cadence of tone of 19th-century language, the different way of storytelling in that era vs. the way novels are now. In terms of world building and how it’s revealed to the reader, I love Ursula Le Guin and Octavia Butler. In terms of dragon stuff, I love Anne McCaffrey and Naomi Novik. In terms of message and philosophy (and also worldbuilding), I love Terry Pratchett.

DECEMBER 2025, POETRY Too often I consider my rib cage hanging from This tree or that I think of inked shadows, of comic Book page gutters of panels as cells as boxes to Keep me in As a boy coloring with crayons was Serious business One eye squinted like a jeweler’s In a loupe Magnified Made monstrous like whale Eyes surfacing from the unknowable deep The eye Is a foreign planet Occult water Thermal-vent Civilizations Everything I’ve ever lost And I think Yes So good So good to do this again,...