Dear Reader,

 

Welcome to the third issue of Quince Magazine, now in its second year as an online literary and visual arts journal! It’s been a year since we opened submissions for the first time and about six months since we published our inaugural issue, themed on LOVE, following it up in mid-October with our second issue, themed on STREET LIFE. We decided to close 2020 (and open 2021) with a bonus, un-themed issue to see what would arise if writers and artists were invited to submit work in a more organic and free way.

 

In the pages of Issue Three: Winter 2020/21, we have twenty-five pieces of poetry, fiction, life writing and visual art with work from writers and artists in the Netherlands, Indonesia, the Philippines, India, Italy, the USA and the UK. Thematically, we have pieces that engage directly with the pandemic, pieces that reach into the artist’s personal life to re-fashion memory and others that speak to the existential anxieties of being other.

 

We have poetry that captures the poignancy of family life, fiction that explores the nuances of alienation, life writing that combines ideas and experiences in unique ways, visual art that invites you to engage with such ideas as body image, the masks we wear, rhythm and sound.

 

To open the issue we have the first two poems of Dutch writer Simone Atangana Bekono’s newly-translated how the first sparks became visible, a collection which explores race, gender and sexuality through verse written in stream-of-consciousness style. And to close we have fiction from the city anthology The Book of Jakarta. Indonesian writer and artist Afrizal Malna’s “All Theatre is False”, is a transportive short story which comically and poignantly explores the nexus of art, wealth and truth.

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I hope among the diverse and beautifully-crafted poetry, fiction, life writing and visual art in these pages you will find something to transport, move and inspire you. ​

 

Best wishes for the new year,

 

Devina

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Founder and Editor

Quince Magazine

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