Escape Artists
PodCastle => Episode Comments => Topic started by: Ocicat on October 31, 2017, 07:22:42 PM
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PodCastle 494: Folk (http://podcastle.org/2017/10/31/podcastle-494-folk/)
by Eden Royce
read by Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali
hosted by Setsu Uzume
Previously published in Spook Lights II (https://www.amazon.com/Spook-Lights-II-Southern-Gothic-ebook/dp/B01NBAB91Y)
Rated R.
I look at the pads of my fingertips. The flesh, bloodless, has been stripped away, and instead of muscle and meat, there is a network of twisting reeds, coiled, wound tightly into green-brown curlicues. Three of them in a staggered pattern like stepping stones in a garden. I touch my fingertips to my face and feel the prickly scrape of dried palmetto leaves.
Click here (http://podcastle.org/2017/10/31/podcastle-494-folk/) to continue reading.
(https://i1.wp.com/podcastle.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Eden_Color_pic.jpg?resize=768%2C908)
Eden Royce is descended from women who practiced root, a type of conjure magic in her native Charleston, South Carolina. She’s been a bridal consultant, reptile handler, and stockbroker, but now writes fiction about the American South from her home in the English countryside.
Eden is the recipient of the Speculative Literature Foundation’s Diverse Worlds grant and is a regular contributor to Graveyard Shift Sisters, a site dedicated to purging the black female horror fan from the margins. Her fiction has appeared in or is forthcoming from FIYAH Literary Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, Truancy, and Abyss & Apex.
(https://i0.wp.com/podcastle.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/PodCastle_Khaalidah_Muhammed-Ali.jpg?w=320)
Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband and three children. By day she works as a breast oncology nurse. At all other times she juggles, none too successfully, writing, reading, gaming, and gardening. She has written one novel entitled An Unproductive Woman available on Amazon. She has also been published in or has stories upcoming in Escape Pod, Diabolical Plots, and FIYAH. Khaalidah also co-edits podcastle.org where she is on a mission to encourage more women to submit fantasy stories. Of her alter ego, K from the planet Vega, it is rumored that she owns a time machine and knows the secret to long youth. She can be found online at khaalidah.com (http://khaalidah.com) and on Twitter at @khaalidah.
(http://escapepod.org/wp-images/podcast-mini4.gif) Listen to this week’s PodCastle! (http://media.rawvoice.com/podcastle/s/media.libsyn.com/media/podcastle/PC494_Folk.mp3)
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While I enjoyed listening very much.... I'm not entirely sure I got it. So I read it as well. I'm still not sure, but I might listen a couple more times to see if it clears up.
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I wasn’t sure what happened, but I loved the imagery, especially the poet with the ink dripping off her braids. I at least got that this woman was called by her ancestors to be their unwilling instrument, and I appreciate that conflict.
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I am fairly unfamiliar with African mythology. Does anyone know if aspects of the story were tied to myths, or if it was all original?