Half Mystic

19/12/2023

“I have yet to forgive the ache I once created,” writes Adrienne Novy in the five year anniversary edition of . That ache may never leave us, but we’re at least coming closer to a place of forgiveness. The revised edition of Crowd Surfing is out today: https://www.halfmystic.com/bookshop/cswg

Reimagining this collection that we published both worlds and moments ago has been the honour of a lifetime for the Half Mystic team. To those coming to Crowd Surfing for the first time and to those revisiting her like an echo of a past self, may she keep you warm on winter nights ahead. May this book teach you, when the ache looms loud and large in your peripheral vision, to invite it inside and ask for its forgiveness.

18/12/2023

"In Crowd Surfing with God you notice that so many others have been touched by lyrics and music notes that help them in their day to day survival. The range of poems in this collection is like someone’s curated playlist. This book was absolutely brilliant!"

Read "Cat's In the Cradle" from Adrienne Novy's , along with a five star review from on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/C09wNSXAbgX/

Just one more sleep until Crowd Surfing With God's 5 year anniversary release! In its new edition, the collection surges back to life with updated work, unreleased poems, and a foreword by Hanif Abdurraqib. The brightside is back, and it's time to sing the chorus one more time. Preorder your copy, out TOMORROW: https://www.halfmystic.com/bookshop/cswg

About the book In its five year anniversary edition, Crowd Surfing With God surges back to life with updated work, new and unreleased poems, and a foreword by National Book Award-nominated bestseller Hanif Abdurraqib. This coming-of-age-journey through poems tells a story of self-acceptance that

17/12/2023

look, kid, i get it: i listen to a lot of pop punk & each
band's sadness begins to sound the same. then again, so does
my grief. or the way i grieve it. my head is full of tiny
moving parts. my throat is cold. it's gonna snow tonight.

For your winter evening, a gorgeous highlight compilation of quotes from : 5 Year Anniversary Edition from .does.lc.read on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/C04j3y8PSX2/?img_index=1

In its five year anniversary edition, Crowd Surfing With God surges to life with updated work, unreleased poems, and a foreword by Hanif Abdurraqib. The brightside is back, and it's time to sing the chorus one more time. Preorder your copy, out December 18th: https://www.halfmystic.com/bookshop/cswg

14/12/2023

"I don’t know if I’m reaching backward in the anniversary edition so much as listening to my younger self reach forward." For the halfway point of the virtual tour, we invited Adrienne Novy back to the Half Mystic blog for an interview on past selves, new angles, coffee shops, and (of course!) My Chemical Romance: https://www.halfmystic.com/blog/adrienne-novy-cswg5

In its five year anniversary edition, Crowd Surfing With God surges to life with updated work, unreleased poems, and a foreword by Hanif Abdurraqib. The brightside is back, and it's time to sing the chorus one more time. Preorder your copy, out December 18th: https://www.halfmystic.com/bookshop/cswg

12/12/2023

"These poems spoke to me on such a deep level that I ended up reading a few of them several times." We adore Glen Damprado's review of Adrienne Novy's on the stunning nostalgia the book draws out of religion, music, and the fight toward healing: https://www.instagram.com/p/C0rhBFHRYy0

In its five year anniversary edition, surges back to life with updated work, unreleased poems, and a foreword by Hanif Abdurraqib. The brightside is back, and it's time to sing the chorus one more time. Preorder your copy, out December 18th: http://halfmystic.com/bookshop/cswg

About the book In its five year anniversary edition, Crowd Surfing With God surges back to life with updated work, new and unreleased poems, and a foreword by National Book Award-nominated bestseller Hanif Abdurraqib. This coming-of-age-journey through poems tells a story of self-acceptance that

10/12/2023

The moment we've all been waiting for: the cover of : 5 Year Anniversary Special Edition. Art by Jules Darling, design by Topaz Winters, words by Adrienne Novy. The brightside is back, and it's time to sing the chorus one more time. Crowd Surfing is out 12/18: halfmystic.com/bookshop/cswg

"One of my favorite things about teenagers is the organic intensity with which they love." We're excited to kick off the Crowd Surfing With God blog tour with this special reveal and an essay by Adrienne Novy on the creation process of the book! Read, share, enjoy: https://www.halfmystic.com/blog/joy-hunger

09/12/2023

The blog tour starts today! Follow along on social media and halfmystic.com for exclusive reviews, interviews, and essays about the five year anniversary edition of one of Half Mystic’s earliest books… and maybe even a cover reveal soon 👀✨

19/10/2023

The brightside is back: we’re over the moon to announce a five year anniversary reprint of Adrienne Novy’s Crowd Surfing With God! In the special edition, Crowd Surfing’s coming-of-age journey surges to life with updated work, ten brand-new poems, & a foreword by National Book Award-nominated bestseller Hanif Abdurraqib. This is a story of self-acceptance that discusses growing up with a rare genetic disorder & mental illness, family & being in a multifaith household, pop culture, & the acts of playing & listening to music bringing you closer to yourself & to healing.

Crowd Surfing With God comes out on December 18th, & you can place your preorder today: halfmystic.com/bookshop/cswg

In its original release, this book was a salve & a salvation, a shout in the darkness, a prayer for not being alone anymore. Now she reemerges, five years older, five years holier. This is a collection of knuckles & cardinals, of emergency room gospels, of torches & seafoam & the blessing of a good pop punk concert. It’s for you, yes—but more importantly, it’s for the things that tried to destroy you & failed. It’s for the golden clamour of survival. It’s for the past selves that live in your hands & throat, still breathing, still breathing.

11/10/2023

The brightside is back. Adrienne Novy's CROWD SURFING WITH GOD: 5 Year Anniversary Edition comes out December 18th, with 10 new poems and a foreword from Hanif Abdurraquib. Five years ago, this book was a salve and salvation, a sacred shout into the void. Now we sing her back to life.

Preorders open October 18th, and you can still purchase the original, 2018 version of Adrienne Novey's CROWD SURFING WITH GOD until then. As Kaveh Akbar puts it, "Novy writes with her feet on the ground and her head in the stars." Don't miss out on the final printing: https://www.halfmystic.com/bookshop/cswg

14/09/2023

Two pretty best friends (photo courtesy of Sanna Wani)!

Reviewers are calling Hazem Fahmy's WAITING FOR FRANK OCEAN IN CAIRO "a beautiful collage of interiority and exteriority ... in the gap between the tangible music of the sanctified singer and the empty promise of his return." Pick up your copy: halfmystic.com/bookshop/frank

31/08/2023

"There was a time where I saw myself and my desire as violent, and this song is meant to complicate that story."

At the intersection of drag and desire sit Sara Mae and their bedroom rock band The Noisy. Journeying into the surreal and defiant, the band subverts expectations of genre and form, creating a sound that honors its roots while remaining stunningly, gutsily singular. Today on the Half Mystic blog, Kate Wilson sits down with Mae for an interview about q***r yearning, spaghetti Westerns, and the allure of the grotesque. Read the full conversation: https://www.halfmystic.com/blog/the-noisy

04/08/2023

Hello songbirds! Our editors have made the decision to push back the release of Half Mystic Journal's Opus II, Issue I: Presto to June 2024. We're hopeful that as we transition into a new opus, the extra months will give us time to curate an issue that we and our community can be proud of.

For those who are subscribed to Half Mystic Journal, your copy of the PRESTO issue will arrive in your inbox or on your doorstep next June, as usual. For potential submitters, this is the sign you've been waiting for! We'd be honoured to read your work: halfmystic.com/guidelines

Thank you, as always, for your support. xoxo

Journal submissions: Send a cover letter (including a biographical note) and up to three pieces of less than 3000 words each. No previously published work, including on personal blogs. The theme for Opus II, Issue I is Presto, a musical direction indicating that an artist play a piece at a rapid tem...

26/07/2023

“I spent my childhood with this overpowering, recurring fantasy of bursting free of my own skin and the pain being over, something else burning through. For me, there is no sickness without the fantastic glittering like a mirage just out of reach.”

Lucy Hannah Ryan, author of YOU MAKE YOURSELF ANOTHER, sat down with J.Z. Weston at Interstellar Flight Press this week for an interview on hope, horror, chronic illness, and the untouchable. Read the full conversation: https://magazine.interstellarflightpress.com/hope-horror-and-q***rness-92ce4f51e090

YOU MAKE YOURSELF ANOTHER is a short story collection that blurs genre and gender lines to illuminate a state of sharp, q***r flux. Pick up your copy of this visceral, tender, and elusive meditation on transformation in its many guises: https://www.halfmystic.com/bookshop/ymya

08/06/2023

Submissions are live again on Submittable! Send us your best music-themed poetry and prose for the journal and press: https://halfmystic.submittable.com/submit

03/06/2023

Hello songbirds! We're having an issue with our Submittable account, but rest assured all submissions to the journal and press, as well as interview requests, are saved in the system. We'll be back online and sending out submission decisions soon. Thank you for your patience!

18/04/2023

Embodying flight & descent, damning wind & resurrected birdsong, the gorgeous & garish & gone, Lucy Hannah Ryan's new short story collection YOU MAKE YOURSELF ANOTHER opens its eyes to the world today: https://halfmystic.com/bookshop/ymya

We're delighted to celebrate release day with a contest for three paperback copies of the new book! Enter on any public social media platform by sharing your response to the following question: WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO YOU TO BECOME NEW? Answer in as many or as little words as you’d like using the hashtag & tagging us . Open worldwide, ends 4/25. More details: https://www.halfmystic.com/blog/from-the-editor-ymya

Thank you, friends, for holding our latest tessellating & snakebitten creation, parallax of itself, emblematic of firelight & intoxication. We’re deeply excited to bear witness to your metamorphoses, as you have to YOU MAKE YOURSELF ANOTHER. Every note of this song of our making & remaking belongs to you.

17/04/2023

"Seven short stories that capture the realness of loss, love, escape, and transformation at its finest, all of which evoke a sense of connection, deep wonder and bizarrely enough, ease. Each story was vivid, brilliantly written, and thought-provoking. This is a little set of love letters about the rawness of humanity."

We're feeling deeply grateful for and seen by the latest review of Lucy Hannah Ryan's new book YOU MAKE YOURSELF ANOTHER by Sammantha Pollitt. Thank you for holding this new and raw thing with such gentleness. https://www.instagram.com/p/CrI424PLn-F/

YOU MAKE YOURSELF ANOTHER comes out TOMORROW! Until then, Lucy embarks on a virtual tour with eight blogs, journals, and newspapers examining the many facets of this story. Preorder the collection for the full, tessellating, sunbleached, snakeskinned truth of it: https://www.halfmystic.com/bookshop/ymya

17/04/2023

“Ryan’s prose is lyrical & cutting—tinged with glimmering, q***r magic. I have to be honest and say that short stories don’t always work for me. I often find I can’t lose myself in them the way I can with longer narratives. There’s something about the stories in YOU MAKE YOURSELF ANOTHER that held me in their palms and didn’t let me look away.“ A gorgeous and incisive review of Lucy Hannah Ryan’s new short story collection by Zeynep Sasmazel: https://www.instagram.com/p/CrEHOWnAqJu/

YOU MAKE YOURSELF ANOTHER comes out TOMORROW! Until then, Lucy embarks on a virtual tour with eight blogs, journals, and newspapers examining the many facets of this story. Preorder the collection for the full, tessellating, sunbleached, snakeskinned truth of it: https://www.halfmystic.com/bookshop/ymya

16/04/2023

“I'm still thinking about it; can you have love without grief? I don't know if you can.” For today’s stop on the YOU MAKE YOURSELF ANOTHER virtual tour, we have a double feature for you in collaboration with Healthline Zine, whose editors wrote reviews of every story in the collection and sat down with Lucy for a conversation on girlhood, godliness, and the exit wounds in between.

See the interview: https://healthlinezine.wixsite.com/home/post/an-interview-with-lucy-hannah-ryan

Read the reviews: https://healthlinezine.wixsite.com/home/post/you-make-yourself-another-by-lucy-hannah-ryan

YOU MAKE YOURSELF ANOTHER comes out day after tomorrow! Until then, Lucy embarks on a virtual tour with eight blogs, journals, and newspapers examining the many facets of this story. Preorder the collection for the full, tessellating, sunbleached, snakeskinned truth of it: https://www.halfmystic.com/bookshop/ymya

About the book Who are you, really? That is the question at the heart of Lucy Hannah Ryan’s short story collection You Make Yourself Another , a visceral, tender, and elusive meditation on transformation in its many guises. Named for an insult hurled at Hamlet’ s Ophelia, You Make Yourself Anoth

15/04/2023

“A name is as malleable as a past, a body, and every other part of the self.” For the midway point of the virtual tour for Lucy Hannah Ryan’s YOU MAKE YOURSELF ANOTHER, Lucy comes back home to the Half Mystic blog for an interview with our own Kate Wilson on the act of naming, metamorphoses of the self, the romanticisation of illness in popular media, and what it means to be haunted. Read the full conversation for free: https://www.halfmystic.com/blog/lucy-hannah-ryan

YOU MAKE YOURSELF ANOTHER comes out this Tuesday, and until then, Lucy embarks on a virtual tour with eight blogs, journals, and newspapers examining the many facets of this story. Preorder the collection for the full, tessellating, sunbleached, snakeskinned truth of it: https://www.halfmystic.com/bookshop/ymya

15/04/2023

“The stories were captivating, eerie yet peaceful, and somehow with these otherworldly experiences, the characters are still relatable. Ryan’s style of writing is almost lyrical. I enjoyed it so much. I look forward to seeing this in my local bookstore!” We’re so grateful for this generous review of Lucy Hannah Ryan’s new short story collection YOU MAKE YOURSELF ANOTHER from Glen Damprado: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq8AWrRrUEn

YOU MAKE YOURSELF ANOTHER comes out this Tuesday, and until then, Lucy embarks on a virtual tour with eight blogs, journals, and newspapers examining the many facets of this story. Preorder the collection for the full, tessellating, sunbleached, snakeskinned truth of it: https://www.halfmystic.com/bookshop/ymya

13/04/2023

"What I enjoyed the most about this reading experience was Lucy’s ability to describe things in a way that made them tangible. It appealed to my sensibilities as each word and sentence evoked feelings I’ve personally dealt with before, such as the all-consuming yearning and the sometimes inevitable hopelessness that comes with being trapped in a place where you feel like you don’t belong." A beautiful new review of Lucy Hannah Ryan's YOU MAKE YOURSELF ANOTHER from Isabel: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq8zrdIL1C1/

YOU MAKE YOURSELF ANOTHER comes out on April 18th, and until then, Lucy embarks on a virtual tour with eight blogs, journals, and newspapers examining the many facets of this story. Preorder the collection for the full, tessellating, sunbleached, snakeskinned truth of it: https://www.halfmystic.com/bookshop/ymya

13/04/2023

"For anyone who loves q***r, feminist, literary horror, this is the short story anthology for you!" For our next stop on the tour, a review of Lucy Hannah Ryan's new book YOU MAKE YOURSELF ANOTHER by Quinn Lawrence: https://instagram.com/p/Cq3e9ZdAppN/

YOU MAKE YOURSELF ANOTHER comes out on April 18th, and until then, Lucy embarks on a virtual tour with eight blogs, journals, and newspapers examining the many facets of this story. Preorder the collection for the full, tessellating, sunbleached, snakeskinned truth of it: https://www.halfmystic.com/bookshop/ymya

10/04/2023

"When I moved, when I danced and caught the rhythm, I didn't have to be myself anymore. I was music and machine, infallible and beautiful and panting for breath. Dance is very transportive, and I miss being able to be beyond my body. But of course, that's the sleight of hand of the story, not the real meat."

Next stop on the blog tour for YOU MAKE YOURSELF ANOTHER, an interview with Lucy Hannah Ryan for Kith Books on dance, illness, rebirth, silence, and Fiona Apple: https://kithbooks.com/ymya

YOU MAKE YOURSELF ANOTHER comes out on April 18th, and until then, Lucy embarks on a virtual tour with eight blogs, journals, and newspapers examining the many facets of this story. Preorder the collection for the full, tessellating, sunbleached, snakeskinned truth of it: https://www.halfmystic.com/bookshop/ymya

This interview was conducted by Katharine Blair between the 4th and 7th of April, 2023 via email.The questions and answers appear here in their unedited form.As someone who identifies a culturally female, as in socialized, perceived, and having participated in those areas of society deemed ‘women....

09/04/2023

"In the back alley of my mind a taxi leaked orange light against the worst of my wounding and I said, I want to leave that here." We begin the blog tour for Lucy Hannah Ryan’s new short story collection YOU MAKE YOURSELF ANOTHER with a guest essay on the H/M blog: halfmystic.com/blog/at-least

Lucy shares an exclusive playlist, a poem based on the first story in YOU MAKE YOURSELF ANOTHER, and more in this essay. Preorder the book, out April 18th, for the full, tessellating, sunbleached, snakeskinned truth of it: halfmystic.com/bookshop/ymya

06/04/2023

It's a privilege to welcome a new journal editor to the Half Mystic team: Amanda Hawkins joins us from Northern California, where they have a book of poetry, The Art of Articulation, forthcoming with Wandering Aengus & Trail to Table Press. Amanda is a Tin House, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and Mellon Public Scholar, and winner of the Scotti Merrill Award from Key West Literary Seminar and the Editor’s Prize for poetry from The Florida Review. Single works can be found in Boston Review, The Cincinnati Review, Honey Literary, Orion, The Moth, Terrain, and Tin House Online.

Please give your warmest welcome to Amanda, dear songbirds. We're overjoyed to have them as part of the H/M family!

03/04/2023

🥀 COVER REVEAL 🥀

Who are you, really? We’re proud to share the cover of Lucy Hannah Ryan’s YOU MAKE YOURSELF ANOTHER. Art by Talisa Almonte, design by Topaz Winters. Become new within the pages of this gorgeous and grotesque short story collection, out April 18th: halfmystic.com/bookshop/ymya

18/02/2023

Shifting, murmuring, blurring the lines of consciousness, opening toward the light: Half Mystic is delighted beyond belief to welcome our newest book into the world. You Make Yourself Another by Lucy Hannah Ryan opens for preorder today.

Who are you, really? That is the question at the heart of this short story collection, a visceral, tender, and elusive meditation on transformation in its many guises. Named for an insult hurled at Hamlet’s Ophelia, You Make Yourself Another blurs genre and gender lines to illuminate a state of sharp, q***r flux. From a girl whose illness has her slipping between the veil of life and death to a grieving model on the path of self-destruction, from the mystery behind a teenager’s disappearance to a woman’s journey through bodily autonomy via strange metamorphosis, this collection haunts and hollows in equal measure.

Thank you to Bessie Flores Zaldívar, Kathryn Harlan, and Marisa Crane for their sharp and generous first eyes on the collection. You Make Yourself Another is a place strange, dark, and howling, where girls are gods and new lives rise out of miscarried dreams. Pleasure and pain intertwine in this collection, and every future wears the name of a self you used to be. The body is a malleable thing here. Whatever you need, you can become it. Preorder your copy, out on April 18, 2023: halfmystic.com/bookshop/ymya