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Author: Cynthia Ward

Half the Sky: A Meditation on Battleborn Magazine #1

Half the Sky: A Meditation on Battleborn Magazine #1

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Battleborn magazine, issue 1 (Iron Age Media, , May 31, 2026). Cover by Samuel Dillon

This is a man’s, man’s, man’s world

— James Brown

One blustery Maine spring day, I blew off class to spend an hour hanging out with a friend in the math department’s student lounge. Picture a Coke welded to my hand and a coffee to hers, as we discussed fantasy and science fiction and divers other subjects in the “wrong” lounge (we were English majors, but it was the English/Math Building and the math lounge was empty. What can I say?). Picture my friend as the reason I figured out I’m a feminist a lot sooner than I would have otherwise. Picture the talk turning to men, a gender to which only one of us is attracted.

“I’m fine with men,” she said. Then she said something I hadn’t heard before, but have heard other women echo many times since: “I just want them to remember women hold up half the sky.”

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A review of Hellebore & Rue: Tales of Queer Women and Magic

A review of Hellebore & Rue: Tales of Queer Women and Magic

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hellebore-and-rueHellebore & Rue: Tales of Queer Women and Magic
Edited by JoSelle Vanderhooft and Catherine Lundoff
Drollerie Press (Ebook [Kindle], 238 pp., $9.99, February 2011)
Lethe Press (Trade Paperback, 238 pp., $15.00, May 2011)

Fantasy allows us to see the world not as it is, but as it might be.

Worlds where mortals have powers and abilities we can only dream of; where women neither need nor expect to rely on a man; where genders and orientations are equal, or face inequities starker than our own.

You’ll find all these possibilities, and more, in the twelve worlds of Hellebore & Rue: Tales of Queer Women and Magic, the new anthology edited by JoSelle Vanderhooft and Catherine Lundoff.

In opening story “Counterbalance,” Ruth Sorrell’s impressive first fiction publication, the world isn’t too different from ours. It initially resembles a typical urban fantasy milieu: magic’s real; the setting’s a modern metropolis; there’s a vampire slayer; there’s a nightclub/bar/safe space for the supernatural set. But the protagonist, Riley, isn’t the vampire slayer–she’s the most powerful being in Toronto. And the safe space? It isn’t, leaving Riley facing a newcomer much too powerful to oppose alone.

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