Eleanor Ball

Illustration of a white skull partially obscured by colorful mushrooms and plants. Different fungi sprout from and around the skull, including red mushrooms with white spots, yellow fan-shaped mushrooms, gray cluster mushrooms, and orange bulbous mushrooms, with green and purple plants filling the background. A ribbon at the bottom of the skull reads “ADMIT ONE.”

it's here, The Deadlands fundraiser 💀

buy your very 2026 coin for the ferryman and help support us

we've got signed books, deadlands issues + psychopomp book bundles, and more coming soon!

please like + RT this to help spread the word

psychopomp.com/the-deadland...

behold!

Reading for FPSF is always unbelievably fun, and it's because of the fantastic work that YOU send in. Don't miss our last unthemed submission window of the year!

IMO every publication and every publisher should have a clear statement about their generative AI policy. To dictate what is acceptable writer usage, yes, but also to declare their own usage (or lack thereof). Do they use it for slushreading, editing, illustration, correspondence?

Fantasy Magazine - issue 98 | Psychopomp Fantasy Magazine Issue 98 features work by: Eleanor Ball, Christian Emecheta, Sunwoo Jeong, Mateo Perez Lara, Tracie McBride, Eleanna Castroianni

reading that poem again 💖

All of Our Mothers are Dead by @eleanorball.bsky.social

find it here ⬇️

psychopomp.com/fantasy/issu...

So honored to have a poem about grief, motherhood, and necromancy in this issue 🖤

This beautiful poem from @tinywrenlit.bsky.social www.tinywrenlit.com/9/evening-ch...

Thank you for reading ❤️

Beautiful and heart-wrenching poem by @eleanorball.bsky.social

All of Our Mothers Are Dead - PSYCHOPOMP.COM Bones ring the garden like a wedding band.

it's Fantasy Friday! ✨🦄⚔️

and our first poem of issue 98 is here!!

"All of our mothers are dead. All of our mothers
reach for me, bones dancing,
skulls bouncing down the hill."

All of Our Mothers Are Dead by @eleanorball.bsky.social

read it here:

psychopomp.com/fantasy/issu...

LOVE this one

Feature: hybrid flash by Eleanor Ball — fifth wheel press Eleanor Ball is a new librarian, a bad cook, an occasional writer, and a haver and causer of many headaches. Come say hi @eleanorball.bsky.social.

I forgot to share in the whirlwind of starting a new job, but I have a hybrid flash thing(?) (what even is genre anyway) up on the @fifthwheelpress.bsky.social blog this week about migraines, tarot, and the way illness disiorients us from our bodies 🖤 fifthwheelpress.com/blogarchive/...

Love this one 🤩🤩🤩

All the Friends I Could Have Made are Having Fun Without Me by Mackenzie McGee Alexis throws a big party and everyone’s invited. She lives a half-hour drive from her childhood home, the one with the big bay window and the basement where we had sleepovers every other weekend f…

"I'll walk through the front door and everyone will cheer, like I'm a fan favorite in a sitcom."

"All the Friends I Could Have Made are Having Fun Without Me" by @mackenziemcgee.bsky.social, new flash fiction out today at OKD. 📝

MOOD

It was my pleasure! ❤️ Such a beautiful book, and I'm so grateful it came into my life.

We're open! Monarch Queer Literary Awards, September 1 to November 20, 2025, monarch.gay

The Monarch Queer Literary Awards are now open for nominations until November 30, 2025!

Visit our website (monarch.gay) to learn more about us and how editors can nominate work. 🦋

I’m so thrilled to have a book review of Larks by Han VanderHart in this issue! 🕊️💕

Get back into a writing routine 🍂 Don't abandon your 2025 writing goals — change them! Plus, news and updates from around the OKD-verse.

Our September newsletter is out now!

This month, OKD Fiction Reader @eleanorball.bsky.social offers some encouragement and tips on getting back into a writing routine when it feels like your 2025 goals are long past attainable:

Nominations open TOMORROW!

Ode to the Maggot Brother of the blowfly & godhead, you work magic Over battlefields, In slabs of bad pork & flophouses. Yes, you Go to the root of all things.

Day 31: "Ode to the Maggot" by Yusef Komunyakaa, featured in @poetrydaily.bsky.social. What a surprising, incredible poem to end an incredible month of poetry!

spare.poems.com/poem/ode-to-...

Michael Juliani — Frozen Sea

Day 30: “South Pasadena” by Michael Juliani in @frozenseapoetry.bsky.social. Wow. The end of this poem hit me like a ton of bricks. frozensea.org/michael-juli...

Three Poems by Stephanie Anderson - BRUISER THE PRIZE, COUNTING ROADSIDE SCENES & INHERIT DEATH LIKE A BIRTHRIGHT

Day 29: “inherit death like a birthright” by @whoastanderson.bsky.social in @bruisermag.com. This poem stuns in its stark simplicity. Equal parts brutal and tender. www.bruisermag.com/anderson_thr...

When is a dining table not a table? by Betsy Mars When is a dining table not a table? Around the kitchen table all the chairs are tucked in, unused, except for the cat resting there. The surface is buried under this and that: unopened mail, remnan…

Day 28: “When is a dining table not a table?” by Betsy Mars in @oneart.bsky.social. This poem has such rich atmosphere and compelling detail. oneartpoetry.com/2025/08/27/w...

Four Poems by Angelica Esquivel  — Barrelhouse we were never born we were never born, a fellow c-section baby tells me, we were cut out of our mothers. she laughs because it’s sci-fi body horror and we love sci-fi body horror becaus...

Day 27: “we were never born” by Angelica Esquival in @barrelhouse.bsky.social. I love the repetition and rhythm in this piece. www.barrelhousemag.com/online-lit/f...

COMING SOON 🤩 My poem “All of Our Mothers Are Dead,” a Gothic story of necromancy, grief, and mothers & daughters, will be out soon with Fantasy Magazine! I could not be more excited!

BOOK MAIL 😍
@the-ethelzine.bsky.social

Normal Distance by Elisa Gabbert. Pilgrim Bell by Kaveh Akbar. War of the Foxes by Richard Sikens. Books that surprise me.

After the Storm - PSYCHOPOMP.COM When I go back, months laterto warm tired bones,clipped-wing ducks preen in the shallows Their feeding frenzy ripples out,a scatter […]

Day 26: “After the Storm” by Ishita Basu Malik in @thedeadlands.com. I love the spare punctuation and unexpected imagery in this poem. psychopomp.com/deadlands/is...

Really quite disheartening and disappointing to see the Tolkien Society hosting a discussion on “AI in fantasy filmmaking” this year at Oxonmoot.

It feels about as morally and philosophically opposed to Tolkien’s work as a talk on the benefits of deforestation.

kermit the frog is typing on a typewriter . Alt: Kermit the frog is rapidly typing on a typewriter.

What are you up to this coming Tuesday at 7:30 PM CST? Is it writing? Writing with me??? Ask me for an invite to my Discord server and join us at No Write Time! It's free, come as you are, come when you can, write what you want with a small group of supportive peers.