In science fiction and fantasy, genius loci emerges when the world isn’t simply the backdrop to a narrative—it is the story. From sentient planets to haunted homes, these locations form the narrative as profoundly as any protagonist. This text explores how speculative fiction authors breathe life into setting, creating worlds that don’t simply maintain tales… they inform them. For […]

Picture by Demianastur / Adobe Inventory The surplus of capitalism is the backdrop in Rosalie Moffett’s Making a Residing (Milkweed, 2025), and on the foreground: motherhood, debt, forest fires, and a speaker who’s deep down like everybody “obsessive about dreaming / up the long run, with hell, with all / that spares us.” All through Moffett’s third […]

It was a muggy, overcast afternoon in June 2010 when Ann Foley’s life unraveled. The day had received off to a pleasing sufficient begin; Ann and her husband, Don, took their two sons, Tim and Alex, for a celebratory lunch at an Indian restaurant not removed from the household house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was […]

Images courtesy of Lisa Carver. My cousin Lorrie invited me on a ten-day retreat in Peru the place we’d partake in historical ceremonies involving the Dwelling Dying Drug ayahuasca and— “Don’t inform me something extra,” I interrupted. “The reply is sure!” I by no means watch the trailer earlier than going to the film. I […]