My 11-year-old daughter and I have been listening to the podcast What to Carry, What to Burn by Blair Braverman. These stories are about surviving harrowing misadventures—stranded on an island, lost at sea, or running from Nazis in the arctic (for reals). My daughter is into it because she has a penchant for horror and experience camping with her Girl Scout troop. I’m into it because Braverman tells a good story.
Braverman is also very good about reminding the listener that we’re all surviving. Sure, there are the people heroically doing so after a series of unfortunate events. But all of us are surviving in some way, otherwise we wouldn’t be here. If you’ve made it through another day, you’ve survived. Good job!
If you have a family—any kind of family—you’re probably trying to figure out how to keep them alive as well. I mean, those kids need clothes, ya know. And food. The dog needs to eat too. And don’t forget to water those house plants.
If you’re like me, the verb ‘survive’ doesn’t actually enter your vocabulary until years later when you look back and say to yourself, damn, that was bad and could have gotten worse. Living paycheck to paycheck, avoiding literal evildoers, staying up all night in a hospital…let me know when you get a Bingo.
Nowadays, I’m lucky to be one of those quiet survivors, making it through the week with a smile or a bandaid or a glass of wine at the ready. I’m happy to hear that many of the protagonists in Braverman’s stories live out the rest of their lives in such fashion. Humbled perhaps, or grateful. As am I.
The stories in our November 2026 issue explore many facets of survival, including animal death, even avoiding social death by clinging to cultural expectations. We have hunters, such as the wolves in Em Harriett’s fable, “The Wolf Who Swallowed a Star.” We have predators, listed ominously in “Egg Song” by Mandy Lange.
We follow the struggles of the hungry, like Lyudmila in H. Marin’s dark fantasy, “What the Bone’s Edge Sings,” and the family subsisting on venison in “Conversations with the Dead Deer My Brother Has Strung Up in the Garden” by Janel Comeau.
We set the table for our own personal monsters—an ogre in “Osedax” by H.V. Patterson, a cosmic horror in “Afternoon Tea Over Innsmouth” by Lena Ng.
In such ways, we survive. Hunting and butchering, cooking and consuming. Arranging marriages, and leaving them. Protecting our families by feeding them.
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Ⓒ Rebecca Halsey