Welcome to Issue 23: Griffins, Possums, and Unlikely Friends
Some of the best friendships are also the strangest. Koko the gorilla and All-Ball the tailless tabby cat. Fum the black cat and Gebra the barn owl. And so, so, so many more delightful pairings of animals one wouldn’t usually expect to become friends.
Friendship is about enjoying another creature’s presence, but also, it’s about having empathy for someone other than yourself. Furry fiction asks us to look through the eyes of other kinds of creatures, an act that helps us develop empathy. There’s no better way to develop true, deep empathy for someone else than to listen to their stories, whether they’re a griffin, phoenix, possum, fox bard, penguin, or computer program.
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To Their Rightful Owner by Reggie Kwok
Birds of Fortune by Kelsey Hutton
Fred and Frieda by Mary Jo Rabe
Little Joy by Jared Povanda
The Tale of the Penguin and the Puffin by Christina Hennemann
The City Above the City by Claude
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Our most recent reading period was spectacularly successful, and we can’t wait to share the next year’s worth of issues with everyone, full of stories from so many different, extremely talented authors. Also, since we changed our guidelines earlier this year, we’ll be able to begin publishing longer stories again, starting with the next issue. For now, we are closed to submissions, but we plan to open again for the month of February, 2026.
As always, if you want to support Zooscape, check out our Patreon. Also, you can pick up e-book or paperback volumes of our first 16 issues bundled into five anthologies, complete with an illustration for every story. The fifth volume just came out today!