Short Fiction
“Potemora in the Triad,” Fantasy Magazine, June 2022.
There are always three: the father, the unfather, and the child.
A girl must escape her awful divine fate, watched by the giant snake god whose back she lives on… her dad. He’s also raising her baby sister to be a twisted god-killing assassin. But her sis gets to have a cool diamond sword? So maybe it’s okay?
Bonus: the most indirect, ornate story I’ve ever written.
— Selected for reprint in The Year’s Best Fantasy, Volume 2 (ed. Paula Guran, Tyr Books).
— Reviewed by Maria Haskins in her SFFH Short Fiction Roundup.
— Nominated to the Nebula Awards Suggested Reading List.
“Mochi, With Teeth,” Diabolical Plots, May 2022.
There is only one trick she wants to do. She doesn’t have her grandmother’s magic, and by doesn’t have, she means she never learned it. When June was born across the sea, magic was lost in translation.
A woman tries to reconnect with her heritage using nothing but a thrifted old spellbook and a package of mochi. Bonus: my first sale ever!
— Reviewed by Maria Haskins in Strange Horizons.
Poetry
“Ampersand,” Strange Horizons, November 2022.
A poem about the thin wind whistle of the shinkansen, screaming, roaring through the dark…
“your subcutaneous mermaid,” Strange Horizons, May 2022.
You, but also the tiny little mermaid that swims around in your veins…
“Inextricable,” Apparition Literary Magazine, July 2021. Under pseudonym ‘Venne Hrzaan.’
A lone astronaut in space, and their uncanny thistle plant…
Press
“Author Spotlight: Sara S. Messenger,” Fantasy Magazine, June 2022.
“Creator Spotlight: Venne Hrzaan,” Apparition Literary Magazine, July 2021.
SARA S. MESSENGER 