M. L. Krishnan

M. L. Krishnan https://mlkrishnan.com M. L. Krishnan Wed, 17 Nov 2021 17:02:53 +0000 https://mlkrishnan.com en Here and Everywhere https://mlkrishnan.com/Here-and-Everywhere Sat, 08 May 2021 21:18:05 +0000 M. L. Krishnan https://mlkrishnan.com/Here-and-Everywhere Here and Everywhere For some unforeseen reason, the wonderful folx at Apparition Lit have bestowed me with the Guest Editor title for their Wanderlust Issue, and I’m over the damn moon with excitement. General submissions are open until Feb 28, so without further ado, let’s dive in, shall we? But first, what does wanderlust mean to you? A yearning for elsewhere when you’re rooted in place? A pulling apart of what here entails, when it is no longer a given? These are the explorations I’d love to see in the submissions queue, in the stories and poems that come my way. Wanderlust is predominantly a feeling, and its innards can only be parsed by how you root it within your stories. As a queer, brown, immigrant woman who has lived in six countries and passed through many more, sometimes a sense of place is a cavalcade of rooms and doors and cupboards in rapid succession, a smudged mash of planes and concrete and landscapes that barely register. Sometimes placelessness is a yearning for the sea, in the way it crests and rolls right before a thunderstorm, the sky as dark as tar. So give me your portal narratives where you slip away from the heres and end up in elsewheres that are not of this plane. Led by visions, your unknown destinations that puncture films of reality. The passages that are not of your choosing through words and worlds. The howl in the body that can only be quietened by taking a journey through terrains that are impenetrably alien, or deeply familiar, or both. I am especially partial to unusual story structures, poetic language, and themes of unbelonging. I would specifically love to see stories from writers who are BIPOC, from historically underrepresented backgrounds, and from the Global South. And above all, stories must be undeniably speculative, and center the Wanderlust theme in a prominent, meaningful way. Get your submissions ready if you haven’t already, and SUBMIT! Have a twitter thread I made with story examples.  And finally, even more examples of books that encompass the theme, because why not: Changing Planes, Ursula K. Le Guin Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Salman Rushdie The Night Tiger, Yangsze Choo Un Lun Dun, China Miéville︎ HOME      ︎ AWARDS ELIGIBILITY       ︎ CONTACT  About https://mlkrishnan.com/About Sat, 08 May 2021 21:18:06 +0000 M. L. Krishnan https://mlkrishnan.com/About <img width="884" height="277" width_o="884" height_o="277" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f3de0ae6fac059ae39574c5d53cd2260202fc2465e36bfa59bdac37ac3a7073d/logo.png" data-mid="107841881" border="0" data-scale="43" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/884/i/f3de0ae6fac059ae39574c5d53cd2260202fc2465e36bfa59bdac37ac3a7073d/logo.png" /> M. L. Krishnan originally hails from the coastal shores of Tamil Nadu. She writes about queer love and desire in the Subcontinent; about blurred realities; about the messy emotional and speculative landscapes of human beings, demigods, and the itinerant ghosts of South India. She is currently the Marketing Director of khōréō, a quarterly magazine of speculative fiction and migration. She lives in the Midwest, and wages a losing battle with tenacious squirrels in her downtime. ︎  say hello  ︎ Awards Eligibility https://mlkrishnan.com/Awards-Eligibility Wed, 17 Nov 2021 17:02:53 +0000 M. L. Krishnan https://mlkrishnan.com/Awards-Eligibility 2024 Awards Eligibility Continuing 2023’s banner year of compounding illnesses, 2024 added new porous dimensions to my general health and malaise, but! I managed to publish two short stories of unquantifiable strangeness—both somehow featuring waterbodies and elusive herpetological beings, in vastly differing circumstances. I would be incredibly honored if you read and considered my work! Short Stories ︎ Frogskin  |  Strange Horizons, January 2024  |  1633 words An anticolonial, body horror retelling of the Frog Prince set in Tamil Nadu, replete with unreliable narrators that shift and fold into themselves. Here it is, on the Nebula Reading List. ︎︎︎ ︎ Measurements Expressed as Units of Separation  |  The Crawling Moon (anthology), July 2024  |  3292 words This is a circuitous, claustrophobic story about obsessive love and snakes and perhaps a long-forgotten prince and a large body of water, but definitely not in the way that you think. This is also on the Nebula Reading List.  ︎  say hello  ︎ Index https://mlkrishnan.com/Index Sat, 08 May 2021 21:18:06 +0000 M. L. Krishnan https://mlkrishnan.com/Index <img width="643" height="381" width_o="643" height_o="381" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/2750af4d9cd4b86104030575a6f9f99cd320de0d618cfcd5b598b9eed15f46b1/logo3.png" data-mid="108381731" border="0" data-scale="85" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/643/i/2750af4d9cd4b86104030575a6f9f99cd320de0d618cfcd5b598b9eed15f46b1/logo3.png" />︎  About  ︎  Contact Short FictionIchthyosis ︎ Fantasy Magazine, December 2025 Measurements Expressed as Units of Separation ︎ The Dark (reprint), December 2025 Salt Slough ︎ Bandigoat: A Collection of Strange & Horrible Tales (print), October 2025 Frogskin ︎ Strange Horizons, January 2024 Undark ︎ Black Warrior Review, November 2023 Interstate Mohinis ︎ Diabolical Plots, June 2023  The Eggshell Sanctuary ︎ Death in the Mouth (print), October 2022  Feeding on the Thamirabarani Metro ︎ Fractured Lit, June 2022 Bride, Knife, Flaming Horse ︎ PodCastle (reprint), April 2022 A House Needs a Reason to Turn ︎ The Offing, March 2022 Other Husbands ︎ Okay Donkey, July 2021  Six Steps Toward Consecration ︎ The Minnesota Review (print), May 2021  A Lamentation, While Full ︎ Baffling Magazine, April 2021 Girls Who Sat at the Back of Buses  ︎ Trampset, March 2021  Books The End, As Seen From the Tip of the Indian Peninsula Winner of the OutWrite Chapbook Competition, 2022 ︎ Neon Hemlock Press Essays The Wayward Gods of Tamil Nadu, or the Case for South Indian Surrealism ︎ Ex Marginalia, February 2023 My Adolescence in an Attempted Utopia ︎ Zócalo Public Square, November 2020 Fellowships & Residencies Tin House  ︎ 2025MacDowell  ︎ 2022-2023 Millay Arts  ︎ 2022 Clarion West Writer’s Workshop ︎ 2019 Awards & Honors Brave New Weird, Vol. 3 ︎ Selection, 2025 WSFA Small Press Award ︎ Finalist, 2024 Afterlives: The Year’s Best Death Fiction  ︎ Selection, 2024 The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Vol. 5  ︎ Selection, 2024 Locus Recommended Reading List ︎ 2021 & 2023 Wigleaf Top 50 ︎ Selection, 2023 Best Small Fictions ︎ Winner, 2023 OutWrite Chapbook Competition ︎ Winner, 2022 Best Microfiction ︎ Winner, 2022 Coppice Prize ︎ Honorable Mention, 2022Stabby Awards: Best Short Fiction ︎ Finalist, 2021Bath Flash Fiction Award ︎ Shortlist, 2021