Italy
Emily Linstrom is an award-winning American writer & artist residing in Italy. Her work, ranging from journalism and personal essays to fiction and poetry, has been featured in a number of notable publications listed here. Linstrom is the founder/author of PASTA+PLAGUE, a Medium publication dedicated to Italian recipes, curious history, interviews, and personal stories.
Latest
A seagull rescue mission, a street fight, a traumatized newlywed: all in a honeymoon crasher’s day’s work.
Essays & Explorations
A collection of essays, fiction, and poetry by female members of The Quail Bell Crew and select contributors. This is the third anthology by Quail Bell Magazine, a literary magazine for real and unreal stories from around the world. All proceeds will be donated to RAINN.
Post-quarantine reflections on death, change, and the riddle of my existence. Do not lose heart.
* International Women's Day * As my dear friend Robert once said, the an(n)als of history are filled with the dicks of injustice. But still, we persist.
Nominated for Best of the Net 2021
Their artwork — their defiance — is their legacy.
*Editor's note: First appeared in American Slander
"When we too are armed and trained..."
My very personal account of moving to Italy, letting go of one's ghosts, and what a severed head in a pot of basil has to do with it.
I started to scribble a poem in Verona, titled 'I Want to Steal the Breasts of Juliet,' and while I never finished it, the sentiment still lingers...
Satan is a skinny b*tch.
There’s the haves and the have-nots, and the only thing standing between the two is a vinyl doll in pantaloons.
Consisting of spiced, curdled milk and lots of alcohol, this boozy bedtime drink dates back to the Middle Ages.
"What will we do with ourselves this afternoon, and the day after that, and the next thirty years?" Daisy Buchanan wasn't the only one to pose this existential dilemma.
*Editor's Note: First appeared in Rebelle Society
Interviews / Journalism / Reviews
A review of Rob Wildwood's collection of 650 magical sites spanning England, Wales, and Scotland
My Florentine adventure and chance encounter with an inspiring coffee entrepreneur this past summer.
penned under the name Emmie Linstrom
Talking "Cursed Britain: A History of Witchcraft and Black Magic in Modern Times" with author Thomas Waters
In moments of dreaming, have you ever been aware of some shadowy ‘other’ just along the periphery, watching you and lending a subtle but unearthly hand to the proceedings? That’s Hidden Velvet.
A chat about being a modern Witch in a material world.
I discovered the Tarot in my teens, at an age when you desperately want answers the corporeal world cannot provide...
penned under the name Emmie Linstrom
penned under the name Emmie Linstrom
On the complicated nature of cultural appropriation, the power and potential of narrative, and why grandma always gets the final say—whether it’s Olive Garden or hot Sambal.
penned under the name Emmie Linstrom
PASTA+PLAGUE
"There's a popular notion that one doesn't move to Italy so much as vacation there indefinitely." Notes from an expat gone rogue.
Pop that prosecco for today marks the 3rd anniversary of PASTA+PLAGUE! To celebrate the occasion I am adding a new section spotlighting some of my favorite people and their projects, a little grazie for keeping our world on the weird & wonderful side.
Murder, disappearances, a piano that plays by itself, Aleister Crowley - welcome to one of Italy's most controversial haunted houses.
You need a good leader when the world is burning down. My Stoic crush Marcus Aurelius was one of them.
Enslaved by one of the Founding Fathers for most of his life, Chef James was a culinary master we can thank for the ultimate comfort food.
Explore the world of the Taxiderman, a rock n roll taxidermist in Padua, Italy who makes his living stuffing dead pets for grieving owners.
The following was originally published by The Outsider in 2017 and has been condensed / lightly edited for updated reading.
Gotta get that bubonic branding.
Ever wished you could reach through the screen and snatch that dish?
Esoterica
Overjoyed to be included in Volume III of the insanely gorgeous Venefica Magazine, published through Brooklyn's Catland. Preorders available now!
“They know you can take it. You have always been a warrior, even in your reluctance. Every life. They’re saying it now: She can handle it.”
"Consisting of time-honored spells, rituals, and DIY remedies, as well as moon, crystal and herbal Magick, Witchery is both companion and grimoire, penned in the familiar voice of a friend who happens to be a successful Witch influencer."
In Catholicism and Christian mysticism, there is a term known as 'the dark night of the soul...
"Anyone who is familiar with Stravinsky’s “The Rite Of Spring” can attest that this time of year is anything but gentle..." On the ancient Pagan holiday, and how to keep the fire burning.
When I was fifteen I spent a few weeks out of the spring semester as an exchange student in Cologne, Germany. Our many guided outings took us to cathedrals and archaeological...
What if the everyday ritual found an equally sacred place in one’s own Book of Days?
Humor
We didn't deserve you.
Your sacrifice did not go unnoticed.
Fiction
A macabre tale inspired by equal parts American gothic + Midwestern ghost towns + a late friend's account of a very real serial killer grandfather. Available now for print/digital sale on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1389531813/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1507878465&sr=8-3&keywords=black+dandy Publisher Statement: "Black Dandy is a quarterly literary journal dedicated to excellence in magic realism, surrealism, and the otherwise strange. Based in New Zealand, we're proud to feature top...
My award -winning short story about a Depression-era dustbowl family, and the many ways magic can be twisted to corrupt or cope.
They say she is the soul of all wasted women: beautiful and barren, she is the suicide of winter, the white bone buried beneath the seedling; a strange and dangerous tree awaiting its first blossom. There is one in every country that has felt the bite of winter: always a woman neither young nor old,...
A tale about a family of monstrous immortals squatting in "a part of London even London has no recollection of..."
Poetry/Prose (Mobile reading not recommended, best viewed on desktop)
Irish, Galway-based literary magazine established in 2002.
Emily Linstrom is an American writer and artist residing in Italy. Her work has been featured in a number of publications including Carve Magazine, The Wisdom Daily, Three Rooms Press, and award-winning feminist horror magazine Suspira.
Her flesh: exquisite astronomy, a gown of swimming constellations still— this is time as it was handed to me.
" The Graces always struck me as ultimate #squadgoals..."
Somewhere in your ancestral villa lives a woman who slices persimmons like she was born to handle knives and babies
1 year anniversary of my Featured Poet pieces on seduction, loss, women, and Castro's Cuba.
Written in thanks for a year of shipwrecks + wonders
One about a brother who died before I was born, but had he lived I’d not be here; the other about the mysteries of suburban women.
I carved out my flesh with breast-cupped shells, pressed until the blood mixed with the spit, till I perspired pearls and rose like Venus through all your girls, the trapdoor in your best laid hell I wanted to be more than the voluptuous swell devouring harbors, rock and Andromeda, longing for some divining rod to...
Mixed Media
This issue of MAINTENANT also celebrates the 100th anniversary of the start of DADA, with quotes from DADA founders throughout the volume.
A stunning annual collection of contemporary Dada writing and art by an international array of sensational artists. Provocative, disruptive and essential for collectors of contemporary radical art.
an annual collection of contemporary Dada work inspired by Dada instigator and Three Rooms Press spiritual advisor Arthur Cravan. Since 2008, the Three Rooms Press series has collected and published dada art, dada poetry, dada mail art, dada collages and more from around the world.
The Liberation of Louise was inspired by a framed antique print of Queen Louise of Prussia that hung in my bedroom as a child and has travelled with me throughout the years, from East Coast to West, before finally being freed from her frame just before I moved to Italy.
A short visual narrative inspired by ancestral nostalgia, lucid dreaming, and the ache within each of us to rewrite our histories as the stuff of romantic epics, rather than tragic minutiae.
"Annabel" is a short film curated in the style of archival footage, set to Erik Satie's Gnossiene No.1 and narrated through an original poem. It tells the macabre little tale of a young woman who may be vampiric, may be tubercular, who haunts a WWII tenement looking for love-or at least a decent dining companion.
"Edinburgh is a mad god's dream..."
"Lavinia," a self portrait inspired by Shakespeare's first produced play Titus Andronicus.
A short film by Fernando Pacheco and Emily Linstrom. We created this film in a few hours, late on a Monday night. It's my first short film and my first time working with the lovely Ms. Linstrom.
"Radiance" by Snazz Mammoth featuring : Emily Linstrom Nicholas Adamski Director & DP: Brandon Herman Editor: Jackie Todd
Amor fati is a Latin phrase that loosely translates as "love of one's fate." It was not always so. There was a time when fate was a daemon riding my back, or else an explosion of prosperity I waited for, watched out for...