Two Witness Weekends left! We are so thrilled to be sharing readings from our Magic issue all month long; join us every Saturday and Sunday for new videos from contributors and 2020 Lit Award winners.

This weekend, we’re celebrating work from Kristina Ten. Ten’s enchanting short story, “The Dramatic Haircut”, exists in a wild world that plunks the main character into a salon chair surrounded by birds with bladed wings. It was selected by Kristen Arnett as a runner-up in our 2020 Lit Awards for Fiction, and was a fast favorite among our readers, one of whom noted “[This story] moves swiftly from satirical and biting to gruesome, but is still darkly funny. The language is concise, not a single cut of air that doesn’t belong. It propels me forward, and I surrender to it.” In addition, our illustrious Fiction Editor, Wendy Wimmer, writes “What I love about Ten’s work is how she balances the weird and the intensely human emotional connection to the reader. She is using the distance between magical realism and humanity to render something intensely personal and beautiful.” (Spoiler alert for our 2020 Fall issue: look for Ten’s forthcoming story “Two Hundred Ways to Disappear.” We just can’t get enough!)

We are happy to invite you to pull up a chair and enjoy our Virtual Launch Party in style with Kristina Ten!

As a special deal highlighting our contributors this month, we are offering 25% off our Magic Issue and Witness Memberships in our online shop when you type their name as a coupon code. $1 from every sale & tip jar donation this month with coupon codes will go to help first responders in the COVID-19 crisis. Add “KRISTINA” to unlock savings today!

Author Bio: Kristina Ten is a Russian-American writer of short fiction and poetry, and a 2019 graduate of Clarion West Writers Workshop. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Lightspeed, AE Science Fiction, Cosmonauts Avenue, Pithead Chapel, and elsewhere. You can find her at kristinaten.com or on Twitter as @kristina_ten.