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Aster(ix) is a laboratory, a space where women writers of color can play and experiment. We celebrate our 10th anniversary with a double best-of issue; this issue will feature Fiction and Interviews.¿

Angie Cruz: This issue was anchored by a conversation we had with Sandra Cisneros when she visited Pittsburgh, and she spontaneously had us draw maps at the dinner table. How we quickly could see by looking at our maps where we have been and even where we wanted to go. Some of us were very good at it, some of us couldn't barely orient the cities we live in. We understood it was a rare occasion, eight Latino/as, all writers at different stages of our careers, all very much committed to making this world a better place. I think this conversation is the heart of the issue... All the pieces air some dirty laundry. All the pieces in some way share an intimacy between women, between fathers and sons, lovers, friends, mothers and daughters. All swing open the door and allow us into the devastation of loss, what we desire, what we are capable of. Don't you think?Adriana E. Ramírez: Absolutely! One of the things I love about the phrase "la ropa sucia se lava en casa," is that there is an inherent contradiction to it--when I think of dirty clothes, I imagine laundry lines, with all the linens on display. Yet, the way the phrase is used, dirty clothes are meant to be hidden, obscured--the mystery preserved. I think this tension/contradiction is helpful, even going back to our maps. Mine was so detailed--anally correct, even. I felt the need to hide it, afterwards. Because there was a shame in being so exact, so nerdy, so eager to show o what I knew. Other people at the table did the opposite. Only three states would be labeled, but the person describing the drawing would boast of their lack of knowledge, root their minimal geographical knowledge in a story, a personal history. Being a little wrong cartographically didn't matter, what mattered was the story. Hence, my shame at hiding my perfectly crisp and white laundry--there's no story there. I wanted the story. That mood, the desire for the imperfect but powerful histories we carry, informed this issue.Featuring work by: Norma Liliana Valdez, Joe Jiménez, Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Gessy Alvarez, Li Yun Alvarado, Lizz Huerta, Sandra Cisneros, Ivan Velez, Laura Winther Galaviz, Josefina Báez, Marigloria Palma, Carina del Valle Schorske, and Melanie Márquez Adams.

The Kitchen Table Translation issue of Aster(ix) Journal explores connections between translation and migration. Featuring the work of immigrant and diasporic translators, it brings personal, cultural, and political dimensions of translation together with literary and aesthetic aspects of the work, and compiles writing and translation from languages including Ahmaric, Arabic, French, Greek, Japanese, Korean, Malayalam, Mandarin, Ojibwe, Portuguese, Spanish, Telugu, Turkestani, Urdu, and Wolof.This issue, by Aster(ix) Senior Editor Madhu H. Kaza, gathers the voices of some of the most thoughful and exciting writers and translators of our times: Rosa Alcalá, Francheska Alers-Rojas, Julieta Aranda, Sitaramayya Ari, Elizabeth Barrios, Sony Coráñez Bolton, Amy Sara Carroll, Iván Chaar-López, Youmna Chlala, Don Mee Choi, Gabrielle Civil, Teju Cole, Bruna Dantas Lobato, Katrina Dodson, Aja Couchois Duncan, Ashraf Fayadh, Shahnaz Habib, Kyoko Hayashi, Hilda Hilst, Kim Hyesoon, Magda Kapa, Mona Kareem, John Keene, Rosamond S. King, Wen Liu, Orquídea Morales, Lina Mounzer, Kishwar Naheed, Eiko Otake, Omar Pimienta, Mary Renda, Eléna Rivera, Zohra Saed, Mahwash Shoaib, Eleni Stecopoulos, Irene Stecopoulos, Cecilia Vicuña, Vimala, and Dagmawi Woubshet.

Aster(ix) is a laboratory, a space where women writers of color can play and experiment. We celebrate our 10th anniversary with a double best-of issue; this issue will feature Poetry and Nonfiction, and Fall 2023 will feature Fiction and Interviews.

Edges: An Aster(ix) Anthology features writers, both established and emerging, whose prose and poetry embraces the themes of establishing, breaking, and defying edges."she stares at the world, takes it to the edge of all the words men weren't able to invent." -Nathalie Handal

My mother loved the moon and would talk to me of their kinship, of her endless respect for the big pale planet and its pull. At night she'd stay out on the balcony, smoking and murmuring. The things they spoke about-who knew.-"Nightgown," Sue Rainsford

"In 2013 when we started Aster(ix), we didn't know what we were committing ourselves to, but for the past five years the journal has been fueled with urgency, love and desire for a space that could house our wild tongue, imagination and vision..."Aster(ix) Journal's Winter 2018 Issue, (Un)bound: Five Years of Asterisms, collects our favorite writing from the Asterisms section of the online journal, writing that embodies the spirit of Aster(ix) five years into our extraordinary adventure.