Joel Hans
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joelhans.com
Joel Hans
@joelhans.com
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
Thank you! It’s a beautiful and beautifully messy process and I’m just trying to enjoy it as much as I can 💚
September 9, 2025 at 9:10 PM
Thank you, Sam! Between this nice news and a little vacation starting tomorrow to reset a bit, feeling pretty optimistic about next week 👀
August 28, 2025 at 12:04 AM
Lastly: I loved “Sorrow for Youth” by @thisisguan.bsky.social for how it invokes the idea of leaving ourselves on the water. A hint of fairy-tale—selkies, perhaps. Prose that's quiet but electric. A perfect way to round out the Retrograde—

www.astrolabe.ooo/un-sorrow-fo...
Sorrow for Youth • fiction from Guan Un
There’s no one else in the beach parking lot. You turn off the engine and the silence rushes in but for the hum in her throat, the tick of the engine cooling.
www.astrolabe.ooo
July 26, 2025 at 2:11 PM
I loved Carter Lappin's "Sometimes You Can’t Help but Feel Like He Does These Things on Purpose" most for the way it weighs the definitions of help and helplessness. Its imagery. How quickly it sets a scene and ashes it completely.

www.astrolabe.ooo/lappin-somet...
Sometimes You Can’t Help but Feel Like He Does These Things on Purpose • fiction from Carter Lappin
Flames lick his arms and legs like an over-enthusiastic puppy. He’s broken the fire alarm with a broom—
www.astrolabe.ooo
July 24, 2025 at 7:00 PM
Eli Dowd's "They Buried Their Dead in Sitting Posture" swept me up in language and scene-setting: the sun-spottedness of it all, the all-yellow, the vulture that mutes atop a tree. The name Mabel always hits close to home, as does the loves we cannot help.

www.astrolabe.ooo/dowd-they-bu...
They Buried Their Dead in Sitting Posture • fiction from Eli Dowd
The clouds are sparse, and trees shift almost imperceptibly beneath their foliage as if to reject the advances of a late noon breeze. Everything is yellow. A vulture mutes atop a tree.
www.astrolabe.ooo
July 24, 2025 at 1:45 AM
Next up, "Annual Review" from @shanaross.bsky.social: This made me laugh more than once in a touch under 200 words which is a true FEAT. It's surreal and absurd and yet *exactly* spec of working life. Go read and laugh and sublimate your own rage!

www.astrolabe.ooo/ross-annual-...
Annual Review • fiction from Shana Ross
You could have put in an escalator. Or better yet, you could have invented an elevator. That would have been Exceptional.
www.astrolabe.ooo
July 22, 2025 at 10:52 PM
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...
July 21, 2025 at 11:01 PM
All over this preorder! So excited to read it!!
July 8, 2025 at 6:45 PM
Thank you Majda!! Means so much to hear that from you.
July 4, 2025 at 1:09 PM
Thank you! 💚
July 4, 2025 at 12:34 PM