Heartlines Spec, Issue 8 (Summer 2025)

Issue 8 features portals, aliens, and metamorphoses. These stories and poems are about growing up, growing apart, and growing together. As much as our characters wish they could stay locked in their favourite moments, life goes on. The same relationships years apart look different, and that's okay—that's the beauty of connection. Stories For the Pursuit of the Better by Chey Rivera An Ear for Magic by Esi Aboagye It's Charli's Body, You're Just Living In It by Gwendolyn Maia Hicks And I Will Read to You About Butterflies by P.A. Cornell Girl Adventure Story by Rose Maxwell Kissing, Brain Parasites, and a (Mild) Nuclear Explosion by J. Needham Under the Skin by T.R. Steele Nine Hundred and Ninety Nine Cranes by Kanishk Tantia Poetry riptide by Rukman Ragas Liturgy for Boys who Bloomed before the World was Ready by CP Nwankwo Time Loop by Prasant Atluri Orbit Decay by Bella Chacha What the Birds Taught Me by Nico Martinez Nocito Nonfiction Outcast and Outspoken: Aloy's Social Re-Integration in the Horizon Series by TJ Rowley Coup de Coeur: Recent spec-fic reads by Lulu Vidal