Joel Hans
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joelhans.com
Joel Hans
@joelhans.com
540 followers 470 following 190 posts
Author of THE BEDTIME EMPTYING OF OUR WORLD (late 2025, Moon City Press + Short Fiction Award)

Forever writing fairy tales in speculative/weird/SFesque disguises.
Dad-ing.
Materializing @astrolabe.ooo.

https://joelhans.com
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Grateful for this today: the girls, covered in dust, leading me on another small adventure in another beautiful place.
Two young girls, the nearer in pink and further in seafoam shirts, walking away from the camera and toward an opening in a small valley with pine trees and grasses
August 3, 2025 at 2:12 AM
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First, Amanda Yskamp’s artwork “gathering,” of which I’ve included just a portion of here: I love the interlocking of hands and shreds, how they seem to be holding both the scenes and each other. The perfect way to bind this group, the whole Universe.

www.astrolabe.ooo/yskamp-gathe...
A sampling of Yskamp’s “gathering,” collage-like artwork that features hands holding onto various objects and scenes
July 21, 2025 at 11:01 PM
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A year ago today @havehashad.com published my verbless fairy tale "The Papermoon" and it remains one of the pieces I'm most-most-most proud of. Fairy tale is form is forever.

www.havehashad.com/hadposts/the...
July 3, 2024 The Papermoon Joel Hans The summer. The sister. The wish. The woods. The wait. The brother. The seizure. The grave. The dead. The deed. The crone. The dread. The day. The night. The day. The night. The autumn. The winter. The spring. The dusk. The trees. The sky. The sard.
July 4, 2025 at 12:45 AM
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Had the rare treat of joining an amazing group of authors this morning for a reading of our Best Small Fictions 2024 stories. I really enjoyed reconnecting with this story despite how much I genuinely struggled through all the weird contractions and mixed-up time logic.
"The Times I'll Trade Time with the Crow" Joel Hans Atlas and Alice Full text available at: https://atlasandalice.com/2023/01/30/fiction-from-joel-hans/
June 11, 2025 at 11:05 PM
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took mabel on a bike ride this morning / even just after 9am it was already too hot / oh no summer really is here
A young girl in a striped dress riding her bike down the middle of a residential street with desert vegetation on both sides
June 9, 2025 at 7:45 PM
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CANNOT WAIT to tuck into this collection from @johnchrostek.com! Book mail day is a good day.
A book, surrounded by paddles of a prickly pear, with text: Boxcutters, short stories by John Chrostek
June 3, 2025 at 10:05 PM
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Went on a little celebratory mountain bike right. Drove up to 7,000 feet. The light was good. The breeze was good. The hermit thrushes are back in town.
A photograph of rocky mountainous terrain with sparse treecover and vegetation, then other mountain ranges fading out into the distance, with a pale blue-to-peach setting sky.
May 28, 2025 at 3:45 AM
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Well.

It's still unreal to me—my DEBUT SHORT STORY COLLECTION has WON the @mooncitypress.bsky.social Short Fiction Award and is coming LATER THIS YEAR!!!

22 stories, 12 years of my writing life. Thank you to everyone who's read my work or followed along for a part of this time. Thank you.
A graphic, split down the middle, with an oil painting of saguaro cacti, mountains in the distance, and a setting sun all in deeply yellow-orange-ochre-red colors. The Bedtime Emptying of Our World short stories Joel Hans late 2025 Moon City Press
May 27, 2025 at 4:14 PM
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Wrapped up the "Elite Triple Summit" version of the Sierra Vista Summit Challenge yesterday—nearly 19 miles, 6,000 feet of elevation gain, and 7.5 hours of painful gallivanting through some exquisite Sky Islands terrain! Good friends, good steps, three very good peaks.
A picture of Joel hiking toward Pat Scott peak beneath pine trees and through terrain of loose rocks and dry grasses. Photograph of the event "passport," with the names and elevations of each summit and a stamp for all three completed. Single Summit Carr Peak (9,236 feet) Difficult Trail length: 11.2 miles Double Summit Carr Peak and Miller Peak (9,465 feet) Very Difficult Trail Length: 15 miles Elite Triple Summit Carr, Miller, and Pat Scott (8,517 feet) Extremely Difficult Trail Length: 18.1 miles Photograph of a distance mountain range covered in pine trees with a deep blue, partly cloud sky above. In the foreground, a rocky mountain peak covered in dry grasses. A selfie of Joel smiling in the foreground, with pine trees and distant mountain ranges behind.
May 25, 2025 at 4:42 PM
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New flash in Variant Lit today, of a father and son and fast-growing saguaros cracking and collapsing all around them.

"A saguaro sprouted an arm. It reached to cradle the unabridged sky, then toppled, rootball wee and wild, laid bare."

variantlit.com/once-the-sou...
Once, the Sound Dad and I Loved Most Joel Hans Was the ribs of the cacti cracking and stretching and cracking again. With his gloved hand, he snapped off premature blossoms and sprouted arms so the young, fast-growing saguaros might crack and stretch toward the sky and not cartwheel over and unseat their own roots. “What did it feel like to grow as slowly as the originals?” “Thirty years to grow as tall as you,” he said, tending. The land was empty but for us and the saguaros leaking where we had to hurt them. A sweetness rose from the sap.
October 15, 2023 at 5:40 PM
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A medley of autumnal seeds the girls and I found on our evening walk.
A collection of loose seeds and seed pods resting on a piece of bamboo wood
October 14, 2023 at 12:52 AM
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I have been reading lots of fairy tales for inspiration, which gives me occasion to share, once again, this most beautiful example: “The Rose” as found in Maria Tartar’s The Grimm Reader.
“The Rose” Once upon a time there lived an old woman who had two children. Every day the youngest had to go into the forest to fetch wood. Once, when he had gone very far into the forest, he met a small, but sturdy, child who worked hard to help him find wood and bring it right up to the house. The child vanished in the blink of an eye. The boy told his mother all about what had hap-pened, but she didn't believe him. Later the boy brought his mother a rose and told her that the beautiful child had given him the rose and would come again when it was in full bloom. The mother put the rose in water. One morning the child did not get out of bed. The mother went over to the child's bed and discovered that he had died. But he looked peaceful. And the rose was in full bloom that morning.
October 4, 2023 at 12:53 AM
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We turned over the garden beds and added new soil and planted autumn/winter seeds in hopes they will, unlike all our other desert gardening attempts, actually flourish.
A woman crouching next to a raised garden bed with fresh dark soil, with two other garden beds behind her, and trees in the background
September 17, 2023 at 2:04 AM