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Hedgehog Book Review
by Catalina Bonati 2/5 stars ★★☆☆☆ Hedgehog by Maggie Koons (to be published March 2027) is a horror novel that revolves around two young women: Riley Kilkenny and Irina Lebedev. Riley is a well-off writer of daily news briefs for influencers, and who is struggling to come to terms with the breakup of her girlfriend Markie, which happened almost a year ago. She finds a new coping method consisting of the killing and torture of animals, which she begins to upload to the intern
Catalina Bonati
2 days ago
To The East of the East Book Review
by Catalina Bonati 1.75/ 5 stars ★★☆☆☆ To the East of the East by Ping Lu and translated by Jeremy Tiang (to be published October 2026) is a translated literary fiction novel about Min-Hui, a Taiwanese writer who after the disappearance of her husband, Chien-I, a Taiwanese businessman, must stay in Beijing to help authorities figure out his whereabouts. She meets a strange man named Shangjun who begins to accompany her in conversation in her hotel room every day, which makes
Catalina Bonati
5 days ago
Dead Teenagers Review
by Catalina Bonati 3.25/5 stars ★★★☆☆ Dead Teenagers by Jude Ellison S. Doyle and Caitlyn Yarsky (published March 2026) is the first comic in a five-comic installment. It centers on a group of four friends who go to prom in 1997, and are horrifically killed that night. This night resets at its end into a continuous loop of horrors in which the killings change every night and become increasingly gory. The friend group tries to figure out what is keeping them caged in this time
Catalina Bonati
Oct 8
The Familiar Dark Book Review
by Catalina Bonati 3.5/5 stars ★★★⯪☆ The Familiar Dark by Amy Engel (2020) is a small-town winter thriller based in the Ozarks, which follows Eve Taggert as she sets on a quest to discover who murdered her twelve-year-old daughter Junie and her friend Izzy. Along the way, she makes friends, rediscovers old relationships, and begins to understand her estranged mother. This is a story about unconventional, socially unacceptable grief, especially in the limelight. At first, Ev
Catalina Bonati
Oct 6
Tatratea Book Review
by Catalina Bonati 3.5/5 stars ★★★⯪☆ Tatratea by Alex Woodroe (to be published October 2026) is a short ecohorror post-apocalyptic novella about Errata, a woman who has been trained by The Mothers to find the source of the mental insanity plague that has taken over the world and decimated the population. She arrives at an old wellness center named Tatratea and is quickly confronted by animate plants who wish to enlist her help in defeating an evil, blurring the boundaries b
Catalina Bonati
Oct 1
The Man in the Watch Still Visits Me At Night Book Review
by Catalina Bonati 2/5 stars ★★☆☆☆ The Man in the Watch Still Visits Me at Night by Joshua Chaplinsky (to be published September 2026) is a multiple timeline horror story about Jenna and her boyfriend Brian who visit an abandoned house called the Vogel house and become trapped in the games of the ghosts of its past and are unable to leave. It follows multiple characters in what appear to be different timelines. The plot is non-linear and is a bit disjointed and confusing. In
Catalina Bonati
Aug 26
On Their Frontlines: The Lives of Japanese War Brides Vol. 1 Review
by Catalina Bonati 4/5 stars ★★★★☆ On Their Frontlines: The Lives of Japanese War Brides Vol. 1 (to be published August 2026) by Marina Lisa Komiya and translated to English by Diana Taylor is a Japanese post-war manga that focuses on the lives of Haru and Yori, two lovers who have been parted by the war and try their hardest to come to terms with their separation and continue with life in war-torn Japan as best they can. The manga starts with a preface by the author which is
Catalina Bonati
Jul 14
Stress in Plants: The Hidden Half Book Review
by Catalina Bonati Stress in Plants: The Hidden Half (2023) edited by Rishikesh Upadhyay is a non-fiction anthology of shortened scientific papers or essays that revolve around biotic and abiotic stresses of plants and their effects on the plant itself as well as agriculture and environment. This book is not for the casual non-fiction reader. Specialized knowledge is required to understand these essays and as a layman, one must google most things. It starts with an introducto
Catalina Bonati
Jul 8
Agnes, We're Not Murderers! Book Review
by Catalina Bonati 2/5 stars ★★☆☆☆ Agnes, We’re Not Murderers! by Jessica Alexander (to be published June 16, 2026) is a short, experimental novel about the spectre of Mary and her haunting of Agnes, a manor, a convent, and an inn. It takes place in an ambiguous Gothic European setting. The book is written in an experimental form that takes its inspiration from Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves. Some of the text is written in red rather than black, and there are footnotes
Catalina Bonati
May 14
The Story Eaters of Yamm Book Review
by Catalina Bonati 2.5/ 5 stars ★ ★ ⯪ ☆ ☆ The Story Eaters of Yamm by Kevin Hincker (to be published 17 June 2026) tells the story of Larry Palczewski, a struggling science fiction writer living at home with his mother. Larry becomes involved with Sky Company, a business urgently hiring science fiction writers to address imagined scenarios of alien invasion. He becomes the leader of the Alien Invasion Cohort, and their inanity provides humor for most of the story. At home, hi
Catalina Bonati
May 12
Our Sister's Keeper Book Review
by Catalina Bonati 2.75/5 stars ★★★☆☆ Our Sister’s Keeper by Jasmine Holmes (to be published June 9, 2026) is the story of Thea, who moves with her husband Kid to the prosperous all-Black town of East Cobb, Mississippi, where hauntings, called “groanings”, pursue only the women of the burg. At the same time, Marah works as one of the town’s “carriers,” which is a woman who has been denoted to experience men’s burdens and to take them on as her own, relieving the men of trauma
Catalina Bonati
May 7
Whereabouts Book Review
by Vidya Hariharan Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel Whereabouts (2018) explores a haunting sense of ‘homelessness.’ It was originally written by Lahiri in Italian and later translated by her own hand into English. Lahiri is a Bengali writer raised in the U.S.A. by Bengali immigrant parents, and in 2012 she relocated to Italy. Neither English nor Italian are her primary languages or mother tongue. However, she is at home in both languages. In this novel, homelessness is understood as a
Vidya Hariharan
Apr 12
The Radiant Dark Book Review
by Catalina Bonati 4.5/5 stars ★★★★⯪ The Radiant Dark by Alexandra Oliva (to be published April 2026) is a generational story of mother-and-daughterhood that starts with Carol in 1980 as she holds her first days-old child when a message is intercepted from Ross 128b, an exoplanet 11 light-years away in another galaxy. She raises her two children in the shadow of the Rossians and of the back-and-forth messages between Earth and Ross 128b. Her daughter, Rosanna, is so inspired
Catalina Bonati
Mar 22
Mother is Watching Book Review
by Catalina Bonati 2.75/5 stars ★★★☆☆ Mother is Watching by Karma Brown (to be published March 2026) is a literary sci-fi horror novel which focuses on Mathilde, or Tilly, and her art conservation job. In the near future, she receives the opportunity to restore the last artwork of a deceased artist named Charlotte Leclerc who used human body and insect parts as part of her paintings. However, as she becomes pregnant and becomes part of the MotherWise organization, the paintin
Catalina Bonati
Mar 15
We Call Them Witches Book Review
by Catalina Bonati 3.75/ 5 stars ★★★⯪☆ We Call Them Witches by India Rose-Bower (to be published April 2026) is an apocalyptic folk horror tale centering around Sara, a young 17-year-old with a large family of three younger siblings, an older sibling and their wife, and a mother. They move around the country in search ground that is safe from witches, which seem to be primordial monsters taking the shape of the surrounding landscape who attack and dismember humans for consum
Catalina Bonati
Mar 5
Refugium Book Review
by Catalina Bonati 3.75/5 stars ★★★⯪☆ Refugium by Eric Nicholas (2025) is a novel set in the Pleistocene, where several different types of pre-humans co-habitate as they take refuge from the Toba super-eruption aftermath in Sumatra. Set in an unspecified area of lower Asia, an Homo Erectus named Last is the lowest-ranking person in the tribe who must make do with scraps but who is sustained by the love of his little brother. The Erectus tribe is beset by a tribe of Homo Deni
Catalina Bonati
Jan 5
The Cold Visitor Book Review
by Catalina Bonati 3.75/5 stars ★★★⯪☆ Jonathan Butcher’s The Cold Visitor (published October 4, 2025) is a haunted house and cosmic horror novel that centers on the marriage of Sally and Herbert, who have reached their twilight years and now live in the retirement village of Heaven’s Sent. Sally comes from an accursed family who every half a century must complete a gruesome ritual in order to keep a demonic cosmic monster at bay, and the time has now come for the ritual to be
Catalina Bonati
Nov 16, 2025
Willow Rose Book Review
by Catalina Bonati 3.25/ 5 stars ★★★☆☆ Willow Rose by M. Kevin Hayden (to be published October 28 2025) is a short novel of...
Catalina Bonati
Aug 26, 2025
Eminence Front Book Review
by Catalina Bonati 3.25/5 stars ★★★☆☆ Eminence Front by Rebecca Rowland (to be published January 20, 2026) is a psychological horror...
Catalina Bonati
Aug 25, 2025
The Midnight Muse Review
by Catalina Bonati 3/5 stars The Midnight Muse by Jo Kaplan (to be published March 10 2026) is a mushroom horror and body horror novel...
Catalina Bonati
Aug 13, 2025
Articles
The Morning It Started
by Elizabeta Žargi That summer I was travelling through Europe on an Interrail ticket — a month of trains and no fixed schedule beyond a language course waiting in Ljubljana. I had already spent a week in Malmö, made a delayed stop in Hamburg after sleeping through it once, then gone down to Geneva to visit Milena. Eventually I returned to Vienna, where I was staying with Gregor and Sandy. They were also planning to attend the course in Slovenia. I was meant to leave on the 2
Elizabeta Žargi
Apr 5
Dreaming of Kalbarri
by Meredith Stephens “Wake up! If we don’t get going now it will be too hot!” urged my fiance Alex. I couldn’t understand why we had to leave for Kalbarri National Park at 5:30am in darkness. Was it really going to get that hot? We quickly arose and headed to the car for the long drive. By the time we arrived, the day was breaking and we were among the first tourists to arrive at the famed Nature’s Window. We made our way along the trail to the window where international tour
Meredith Stephens
Nov 2, 2025
Between Two Skies: An Egyptian Heart in Albany
by Walid Abdallah When I first arrived in Albany, New York, in the winter of 2014, I felt as if I had stepped into a painting. The air...
Walid Abdallah
Oct 13, 2025
Reviews
Hedgehog Book Review
by Catalina Bonati 2/5 stars ★★☆☆☆ Hedgehog by Maggie Koons (to be published March 2027) is a horror novel that revolves around two young women: Riley Kilkenny and Irina Lebedev. Riley is a well-off writer of daily news briefs for influencers, and who is struggling to come to terms with the breakup of her girlfriend Markie, which happened almost a year ago. She finds a new coping method consisting of the killing and torture of animals, which she begins to upload to the intern
Catalina Bonati
2 days ago
To The East of the East Book Review
by Catalina Bonati 1.75/ 5 stars ★★☆☆☆ To the East of the East by Ping Lu and translated by Jeremy Tiang (to be published October 2026) is a translated literary fiction novel about Min-Hui, a Taiwanese writer who after the disappearance of her husband, Chien-I, a Taiwanese businessman, must stay in Beijing to help authorities figure out his whereabouts. She meets a strange man named Shangjun who begins to accompany her in conversation in her hotel room every day, which makes
Catalina Bonati
5 days ago
Dead Teenagers Review
by Catalina Bonati 3.25/5 stars ★★★☆☆ Dead Teenagers by Jude Ellison S. Doyle and Caitlyn Yarsky (published March 2026) is the first comic in a five-comic installment. It centers on a group of four friends who go to prom in 1997, and are horrifically killed that night. This night resets at its end into a continuous loop of horrors in which the killings change every night and become increasingly gory. The friend group tries to figure out what is keeping them caged in this time
Catalina Bonati
Oct 8
Short Stories
Back in the Day
by Robert Lowinger I was in the seventh grade, in 1969, living in a little town outside of Buffalo, New York when me and Danny Nissen, who was almost 15, threatened to beat the crap out of Larry McKoon for telling Danny that he wasn’t good at basketball, and he should get booted off the team. Well, Danny said, “Jimmy, you got to be a man and not let anyone diss your friends, certainly not a little prick like Larry,” and ever since Danny killed that cat with a knife behind the
Robert Lowinger
Sep 24
Ticket to Ride
by Sara Etgen-Baker "You gotta have a ticket to ride!” snapped the Carney. “Get a ticket or move outta da way, kid. You’re takin’ up space!” I stared motionless as the Ferris wheel cut through the heavy summer clouds. “Here’s her ticket, sir. We three are ridin’ together.” “Not happenin’ lady—only two per chair. One of youz has to ride by yerself.” “No problem! She’s the oldest; she’ll ride by herself.” “Whatever ya say, lady. She seems a bit scared to me though.” “Your broth
Sara Etgen-Baker
Sep 15
Intangible Ingredients
Sara Etgen-Baker After Granny died, Mother requested only one item from her mother’s possessions. “All I really want,” Mother told my uncle, “are her old recipe cards and antique file box.” Mother’s request puzzled me, for I knew Mother didn’t need the recipe cards and file box for any practical reason. She’d known for decades how to make Granny’s pumpernickel bread, sauerkraut, and her breakfast specialty—streusel kuchen. But when the file box arrived a few days later, Mothe
Sara Etgen-Baker
Sep 13
Poetry
Hardcore Soup
by Irina Ayrapetova Biting nails and skin on fingers, Almost getting to the bone. Saber-toothed, my tiger lingers - There's anxiety on the throne. Blood is broth. My inner wild beast Devours hangnails - gore beneath. This red soup splash is the brightest Liquid in my knify teeth.
Irina Ayrapetova
10 minutes ago
Old MacDonald: A Ruthless Visionary
by Paul Burgess When rustic Old MacDonald had a farm, the city people thought it was so cute. They praised the place’s humble rural charm and loved to hear the farmer play the flute for animals to join in song and dance to jolly jingles Mac had loved to make. The tourists often left with catchy chants and bags of liver, chitlins, ham, and steak. But other tourists only left in sacks containing cuts of Farmer’s Famous Meats. The song of human flesh against the axe
Paul Burgess
5 days ago
Searching for a Ghost
by Aries Cid The perfect locale: outside this mansion, across the ghost town are phantasmal graves with spirits unbound; the perfect weather: an overcast night, striking keraunoús, and a biting squall where psyches are soothed; and the perfect prep: a half-pint raincoat, a humble flashlight, and human-made snacks for shadows so bright. But it’s confounding; upon departing, I descry myself sleeping on red rain, remaining unfelt.
Aries Cid
6 days ago
Art & Photography
Submission Guidelines
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We do not publish homophobic, transphobic, racist, or misogynist works of any kind.
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If the piece you wish to submit has italics or an image attached, please email us your submission at ultramarineliteraryreview@gmail.com rather than using the submission form.
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Art and photography must be uploaded to an email and must NOT be shared as a Google Drive document.
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Prose must be less than 3,000 words.
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Poetry must be less than 3 pages, single-spaced.
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We respond to submissions within the span of two weeks.
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By clicking on the SUBMIT button, you are agreeing to the following terms:
a) The submission is an original work that has not been previously published.
b) You have obtained permissions by the third party involved if the submitted work contains intellectual property not attributed to your authorship.
c) By submitting, you guarantee you hold the rights to the work, and you grant Ultramarine Literary Review the rights to publish the submitted work. After publication, rights revert to the author.
d) Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but the author must let us know if their work has been accepted elsewhere prior to publication.
e) Submitted articles, reviews, and short prose fiction less than 1,000 words will be translated from English-Spanish of Spanish-English by Wix Translation AI along with manual translation by the editor. The author has the right to approve or deny translation.
f) Poems will not be translated unless the author supplies their human-written translation.
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