Wildwood is here!
- Fairy Tale Magazine
- Apr 14
- 7 min read
We are elated to present Wildwood, our tree spirit issue! The issue is designed to move you subtly through the seasons with each story and poem. We also have non-fiction works discussing Green Man/Woman, an exploration of the Yaksha, and an interview with our cover's artist.
Scroll down for a list of featured authors and first lines for each piece in Wildwood, our Spring/Summer 2026 Issue. Click on the PDF to download and read the issue. A donation of $7.00 is greatly appreciated to keep The Fairy Tale Magazine running and able to pay its authors, its hard costs, and create our beautiful PDFs.
Access the Journal Here ⬇️
What’s inside:
Green Love
In spring you are the willow man,
your hair turning yellow
Theodora Goss is the author of the Athena Club trilogy of novels, as well as five short story and poetry collections. Her most recent book is the collection Letters from an Imaginary Country from Tachyon Publications. Her work has won the World Fantasy, Locus, Mythopoeic, and Rhysling awards. She teaches rhetoric at Boston University.
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Only Leaves, Only Shade
I wake when frost loosens its grip
on the roots.
May Garner is an author and poet who has been sharing her writing online for over a decade. She is the author of two poetry collections, Withered Rising (2023) and Melancholic Muse (2025). Her work has appeared in Querencia Press, Cozy Ink Press, Arcana Poetry Press, among others. Find her on Instagram (@crimson.hands).
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The Green Man and His Friends: Harbingers of Spring in Folklore and Literature
Spring is the season everyone waits for. After the sleepy months of winter, spring beckons us to begin anew, awakening our souls with its language of flowers.
Kelly Jarvis works as the Contributing Writer for The Fairy Tale Magazine, a Recurring Columnist for Eternal Haunted Summer, and teaches at Central Connecticut State University. Her debut novella, Selkie Moon, was selected as a semi-finalist in the Speculative Fiction Indie Novella Championship. Learn more https://kellyjarviswriter.com/
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The Ghillie Dhu of the Bealltainn Wood
The path that winds through the birch wood is no proper path at all in places, only a thinning of the moss where feet and hooves have passed often enough to leave their mark.
James Garry is a heritage campaigner and cultural researcher based in Scotland. They specialise in Scottish folklore, ghostlore, and dark heritage. They hold an MLitt from the University of the Highlands and Islands and will be undertaking PhD research on Scottish ghost narratives, storytelling, and place from October 26 onward.
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Becoming Folklore
Here she comes, Queen of Midday,
Sunshine Mother baring mist-laden heart,
Silvatiicus Riddle is a 4x Rhysling-nominated Dark Fantasy/Speculative Fiction Writer haunting the bones of an old amusement park in NYC. His work has appeared in: Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Enchanted Living, EHS, Spectral Realms, and Creepy Podcast. He combats despair with his newsletter, The Goblin's Reliquary. For all works: http://linktr.ee/silvatiicusriddle
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The Dryad of Lucus Lerne
Now, this happened in the time of my grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather, but the story was told to me this way, and I believe it.
Urna Semper is a well-travelled writer from Argoshaan. Born to a family of scriveners, she learned the art of writing at her mother's side. She knows the valley of Lucus Lerne well, but does not believe she has ever actually seen a dryad. urnasemper.substack.com
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Dancing over mycelium
the dwarf
Kubera
yaksha king
Shoba Narayan won the Erbacce Prize for Poetry 2025 that resulted in the publication of her first poetry book. A Pushcart-prize nominee, her work appears or will appear in Prairie Schooner, Frontier Poetry, Southword, Tiger Moth Review, Marrow Magazine, Verseville, DMQ Review, Stillwater Review, Mantelpiece, Indian Literature, and others.
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The Mangrove Maiden and a Bargain of Salt
Far away, where the mangroves leaned into the sea as if whispering secrets to the waves, there stood a village so small the tide might have carried it away in its sleep, had its people not clung stubbornly to their stilted homes and winding paths of mud and roots.
Angela “Blythe” Tabios is a Philippine essayist, fictionist, poet, and film enthusiast. She won the University of Santo Tomas Gawad Ustetika in 2025, has been published in Dapitan 2023: Panopticon and The Halo-Halo Review, and runs Magnolia By the Margins on Substack, exploring the intersections of gender, memory, and identity.
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The Guanacaste Tree
We will meet by the Guanacaste tree that grows in the middle of the road, the tree no one dares to cut down.
Lisa Marie Martens is a NYC native with Costa Rican roots. Her novel Like It Never Happened is available on Amazon and BN. You can also contact her at Lisa.snetram@gmail.com. Pura Vida.
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Forests, Fertility, and the Hope of Good Fortune: an Exploration of the Yaksha
Folklore and mythology rarely fit into the simple boxes and binaries modern categorists with black-and-white sensibilities might wish for.
Shveta Thakrar’s work has appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies, most recently Brian Froud’s Green Women. Her debut novel, Star Daughter, a 2021 Andre Norton Nebula Award finalist, was followed by The Dream Runners and Divining the Leaves. Her novella, Into the Moon Garden, is available from Audible.
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Daphne to Apollo
I remember how I, stumbling, fled
and slipped from female form
Kelly Jarvis, see above.
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The Churel’s Garden
There was once a tall sacred fig tree in a grove near my nano’s house, and I could see it from the bedroom window when I visited.
Sachal Siddique Ali is a Pakistani-American writer and fantasy enthusiast who grew up in
Wisconsin and now resides in California. He hopes to one day publish a fantasy novel rooted in his culture's fairy tales and folklore.
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Leaf from a Lost Manuscript by Jacob Grimm
It’s all really a gigantic
secret, when you get
down to it.
Christopher Greiner’s poetry, fiction, essays, and book reviews have appeared in Eternal Haunted Summer, Indie Shaman, and IK: Other Ways of Knowing. He is a contributing reviewer at Facing North, and holds English degrees from Penn State and the University of Minnesota. He works on fairy lore of various kinds.
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The Pear Tree
The maiden came at night, beneath a moon like bitten fruit. Her form rose slowly over the high orchard wall: trembling arms first, followed by a mass of pale hair, and finally, strong, straining legs that fought her long skirts until she finally emerged atop the wall entire.
Marisa Celeste Montany was born and raised on the Big Island of Hawaii, splitting time between Ka‘u and Kona. A retired ballet dancer, she currently resides with her husband in Maryland where she takes walks, studies herbs, reads books, and writes. You can visit her at marisamontany.com. She loves horizons.
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Mamaw Green Reckons with the Weight of the Sky
once upon a
dark mountains rise from crumpled Earth
Rob E. Boley likes to make blank pages darker. He co-founded Howling Unicorn Press with his wife, author Megan Hart, to conjure tales that thrill, chill, and fulfill. You can learn more about this weird figure of the dark by visiting his website at http://www.robboley.com.
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Hazel Mother
“You will come back to me…”
Angela Rega is a writer in love with folklore, fairy tales and furry creatures. During the day, she works as a teacher and school librarian and writes in the hours in between. Her stories have been published in places including The Dark, Overland, Corvid Queen and The Fairy Tale Magazine. She is an Aurealis Awards, Neilma Sidney and Norma K. Hemming Finalist. She often falls in love with poetry and drinks way too much coffee and is still searching for the gateway to Fairyland.
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Drawing Strength
They say that meditation brings you ease,
so bare-toed on the ground I set my feet,
Marie Brennan is the Nebula and World Fantasy Award-nominated and Hugo Award-winning
author of the Memoirs of Lady Trent, other fantasy series, over a dozen poems, and nearly one hundred short stories. As half of M.A. Carrick, she’s written the Rook and Rose trilogy. Find her online at http://linktree/swan_tower.
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The Fine Art of Leonard Greco
in conversation with Kristen Baum DeBeasi
I first met Leonard Greco at his exhibit titled Fairyland in Southern California.
Kristen Baum DeBeasi is the Editor in Chief of The Fairy Tale Magazine. She is a poet, writer, and composer who engages her wonder and curiosity to explore whichever parts of the world she finds herself in.
Leonard Greco is an American self-taught narrative painter, decorative muralist, and fiber artist based in Arizona. His work is characterized by a surreal, haunting, and often grotesque style that blends, religious, mythological, and personal themes, frequently exploring the extremes of human existence, including birth, death, and transformation.
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Hyangga — The Woodsman
하나 (Hana)
War strikes you through,
keeps you for four seasons.
Ma Bones is a semi sentient skeleton haunting the gutters of North East Florida.
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Leaf and Stone
A widower, head cook to a powerful knight, had one daughter, who he cherished dearly because she looked so like her mother.
Lynden Wade is the author of the fairytale collection, The Tapestry Unravels: Weaving Old Tales into New. She lives in the East of England, not far from two castle ruins and owns far more fairy crowns than she should at her age.
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The Old One
His hair cardamon and cinnamon,
beard clove,
Kim Malinowski (she/they) is a lover of words. She is the author of Home, Phantom Reflection, Buffy’s House of Mirrors, Clutching Narcissus, Reverberations, Lilith Weaving Mountains into Canyons, and Death: A Love Story. She writes because the alternative is unthinkable.
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Winter Green
Once upon a time when the all trees were green in springtime and summer, brown in autumn, and barren in winter, a young woman named Silvia lived with her parents near the center of a great forest.
Robert Allen Lupton is a retired commercial balloon pilot. He runs and writes every day, but not necessarily in that order. Over 300 of his stories have been published in various magazines and anthologies. His four novels, nine short story collections, and edited anthologies are available in hardcover, paperback, EBook, and audiobook formats nearly everywhere except Amazon.
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Dryad’s Song
Dress me in the moss from redwoods
And braid my hair with mountain lupine
Madeleine Elias has an MFA in Writing from the University of San Francisco, and a draft of her first novel. She is a writer of magical words and an avid crafter and maker. She is currently working on her Master of Library and Information Sciences at San Jose State University.
The Fairy Tale Magazine is made possible in part by the generosity of our Fairy Godparents Club. Our staff members volunteer their time. If you enjoy this issue and giving feels good, we welcome your donation!
