A Suitable Match By Basil Rosa, The November 2025 Featured Story In The Bloomin' Onion

Too cruel is life to those aged beyond their years.

A sincere humble thank you to editors Daniel Groves and Leah Harter at The Bloomin' Onion for featuring my Basil Rosa story, A Suitable Match in the November 15th, 2025 issue of their magazine.

The story is now available on the Featured Archives pages. Here is a direct link: www.thebloominonion.com/a-suitable-match-basil-rosa

This links to the The Bloomin' Onion home page: https://www.thebloominonion.com/short-stories-home

Here is the story's opening paragraph:

A Suitable Match

by Basil Rosa

Cruelty and the teen experience are often synonymous, and Najam’s harelip and long hooked nose made him an easy target. I didn’t know if he was devout, nor did I doubt he felt like an outsider. When I asked my daughter Georgina about him, she replied with a note of defensive incivility, sounding a lot like Clare, her mother, that organized religion was never what anybody’s God had in mind. I could no longer make Georgina attend mass or pray for Najam. Neither could Clare. Accepting limitations is one of those difficult lessons each parent learns....

The Uroboros Mirror, A Basil Rosa Story Published In The Bloomin' Onion, October, 2025

 

A Basil Rosa story, The Uroboros Mirror, is now available in Issue Number Two of the online magazine, The Bloomin' Onion. https://www.thebloominonion.com/the-ouroboros-mirror-issue-two

Many thanks to Editor-in-Chief, Daniel Groves.

Here is a link to main page of The Bloomin' Onion:  https://www.thebloominonion.com/

Here is the first paragraph:

The Uroboros Mirror

by Basil Rosa

In the 1980s, while wearing red leather pants, it hit me—I was a girl in a man’s body. Bopping about, my hair spiked and dyed peacock blue, a ring in one nostril, I wanted to be Cindy Lauper. I kept my Sony Walkman and earbuds on, determined never to conform or lose the humor and optimism my favorites songs delivered, though I vacillated between “Cruel Summer” by Bananarama, and Funboy Three’s “The Lunatics Are Taking Over The Asylum.”

Blurring The Line, A John Michael Flynn Story Published In Penelle, October 2025

A big thank you to editors Kameron Ray Morton, and Oscar Matallana Correa for publishing the story, Blurring The Line, in the inaugural issue of Penelle magazine. 

Kameron hails from Arkansas, and Oscar from Bogota, Columbia. I'm tickled and grateful to have a story accepted by two editors from such different backgrounds. I hope their interest speaks to universal elements it may possess.

Here is a link to the Penelle home page: https://penellemagazine.com/2025/10/22/issue-1/  

This links directly to the story: https://penellemagazine.com/2025/10/22/blurring-the-line/

                                                                      

What Looks Like What Is, A Basil Rosa Story, and Gentian, An Essay, Both Published in Blood + Honey, September, 2025

A heartfelt thank you to fiction editors Jacki Hyatt and Cristiano Cardone, and particularly to Editor-In-Chief, David Estringel for including the Basil Rosa short story, What Looks Like What Is in the September 2025 issue of Blood + Honey. 

This link will take you to it: https://www.bloodhoneylit.com/fiction/what-looks-like-what-is

David Estringel also included the Basil Rosa creative nonfiction piece, Gentian, in this same issue. 

You can find Gentian here: https://www.bloodhoneylit.com/cnf/gentian 

Gentian appeared earlier in the year in Issue #4, June 2025, of The Argyle: https://www.theargylelitmag.com/nonfiction/gentian

Here, too, is a link to the Blood + Honey home page: https://www.bloodhoneylit.com/blood-honey-home-page

Visit David's website here: www.davidaestringel.com He's also on X, and Instagram.

David has written and/or published seven poetry/hybrid collections which include, Indelible Fingerprints (Alien Buddha Press, 2019), Blood Honey (Anxiety Press, 2022), Cold Comfort House (Anxiety Press, 2022), little punctures (Really Serious Literature, 2023), Blind Turns in the Kitchen Sink (Anxiety Press, 2023), Brujeria (Alien Buddha Press, 2025), and Down the Bermuda Highway (Alien Buddha Press, 2025). 

He has also written six poetry chapbooks: Punctures (Really Serious Literature, 2019), PeripherieS (The B’K, 2020), Eating Pears on the Rooftop (Finishing Line Press, 2022), Golden Calves (Back Room Poetry, 2023), Sour Grapes (Two Key Customs, 2023), and Blue (Back Room Poetry, 2023). 

David's first co-authored novel Escaping Emily was released by Thirty West Publishing House in June 2024.

His screenwriting includes awards for his projects, "Roadkill," and "Brujo."

Anthony And The Squirrel, a Basil Rosa Story Published In Skipjack Issue #5 Waterways, 2025

Skipjack Review, Issue #5 Waterways

Featured Writers: LindaAnn LoSchiavo, Colleen Harris, Josh Mahler, Emma Galloway Stephens, Peter Cashorali, Zachary Forrest y Salazar, Peycho Kanev, Randy Minnich, Storm Ainsely, Kait Boers, Basil Rosa, Lilia Mahfouz, Odin Meadows, Hamish Kavanagh, Rebecca Callahan, Debbie Cutler, Rituparna Mukherjee, Mary Collins

A new Basil Rosa short story, Anthony And The Squirrel, is now available at Skipjack Review, Issue #5 (pictured above).

Big thanks to Ope for all the support. 

You can find the complete issue as a downloadable PDF here: https://skipjackreview.com/archives/

Pictured below is Skipjack Review, Issue #1. Visit the main page here: https://skipjackreview.com/

Here is the Skipjack Review Substack link. Please tell Ope I sent you: https://skipjack.substack.com/p/the-skipjack-review

Hard To Find: An Anthology of New Southern Gothic Fiction Includes The Short Story, Tallulah

The short story, Tallulah, published originally in Stylus Lit magazine out of Australia, has been included in this anthology Hard To Find, edited by Meredith Janning, an editorial assistant at Stephen F. Austin State University Press. 

Meredith earned her BA in Mass Communication from SFA in May of 2021 and is set to receive her MA in Publishing in May of 2023. Hard to Find: An Anthology of New Southern Gothic is the result of her love of the Southern Gothic and is particularly inspired by Flannery O’Connor’s work.

Publisher: Stephen F. Austin State University Press. ISBN: 9781622889457. Number of pages: 160. Dimensions: 229 x 152 mm

Here is a link to the book at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Find-Anthology-Southern-Gothic/dp/1622889452

And a link to Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hard-to-find-meredith-janning/1142714980

This is from the book's listing online:

"In its own way, the American South is riddled with elements of the gothic genre. Instead of empty, isolated castles it has small towns, though just as haunted, just as full of secrets. The Southern Gothic is a clash between the old and the new, tradition and breaking the cycles its people are, or should be, ashamed of. It's grotesque and violent, surreal and symbolic but it makes people listen. It's about calling people to change or be forgotten. In the past, this genre had writers like O'Connor, Faulkner, Allison, and Williams, but these ideas and experiences are just as present today as they ever were."

Hard to Find: An Anthology of New Southern Gothic is an anthology focused on giving writers an opportunity to shed light on the issues faced by the people of the American South today, whether those are new issues or just new ways of taking on the same ghosts. How do you define the South? What makes Southern people different? Has anything really, truly changed from its history?

This is from the book's introduction by Joe R. Lansdale, https://joerlansdale.com/

"As Charlie Parker, better known as the 'Bird' said about his love of country music, 'It’s the stories, man, it’s the stories.' We will call these stories neither snail nor escargot, but what is clear is they wear the lanyard of Southern Gothic dangling around their necks. Beneath the lanyard is the skin, blood and bones of all good fiction."

Find more about Joe here: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/58971.Joe_R_Lansdale

And here: https://nocturnalrevelries.com/2022/04/03/joe-r-lansdales-best-short-stories/

Joe R. Lansdale, pictured above.

Find him at: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/l/joe-r-lansdale/

Lastly, here you'll find Chelsea Riley's review of the anthology at the Southern Review of Books: 

https://southernreviewofbooks.com/2023/07/14/books-to-celebrate-in-july-2023/

Or you can purchase the anthology here from Waterstones UK: https://www.waterstones.com/book/hard-to-find/meredith-janning/9781622889457

Or here directly from the Southern Review Bookshop US:

https://bookshop.org/p/books/hard-to-find-an-anthology-of-new-southern-gothic-meredith-janning/7c44195b5017a690?ean=9781622889457&next=t&next=t&affiliate=100

                                               

Tallulah, A Short Story Published In StylusLit, Issue 12

I shot the photo above using high speed film, no flash, only natural light in Manhattan, the Lower West Side, either Ninth or Tenth Avenue. The bar is long gone.

In September, 2022, StylusLit, a bi-annual online literary journal based in Australia, published in Issue #12 my short story, Tallulah. 

A thank you to Gershon Maller, Editor, and his colleagues for their support. 

Mr. Gershon is a poet, editor of academic and literary texts, and a member of the Institute of Professional Editors. In addition to a First-Class Honours degree in Philosophy (La Trobe University), he holds an MPhil in Creative Writing, and a PhD in Literary Studies (University of Queensland). His research theses explored the works of J.L. Borges and Wallace Stevens, respectively. His doctorate was examined with distinction at U.C. Berkeley. He was awarded a Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship at the University of Queensland where, in addition to the Queensland University of Technology, he taught narratology. He is the author of two poetry collections and one in progress.

You can find the story here: https://styluslit.com/fiction/tallulah

Below is the story's first paragraph.

Tallulah

 John Michael Flynn

The wise among us know there are no rights. There are merely adjudications. This was Haroon Feisal Mohamed’s thought as he labored to steer Jumbo Cousins’ red van. Jumbo had insisted Haroon drive, and that they avoid Greenville and Hendersonville, opting instead for Route 23 North through Tallulah Falls and the gorge there. They’d then cross the Georgia state line into Waynesville and then drive Route 40 home to Asheville. Why? Because Haroon had to conquer his fear of Tallulah Gorge....