Emily Linstrom

Writer / Artist

Italy

Emily Linstrom is an award-winning American writer & artist residing in Italy since 2017. Her work, ranging from journalism and personal essays to fiction and poetry, as well as mixed media, has been featured in a number of notable publications listed here. Linstrom is a 2021 Best Of The Net nominee and the founder/author of PASTA+PLAGUE, a Medium publication dedicated to (mostly) Italian recipes, curious history, interviews, and personal tales. She believes AI is for losers and prefers to work the old-fashioned way with old-fashioned tools: blood-sweat-tears, natural talent coupled with self-doubt, procrastination, a dog to distract her, and self-medication.

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Portfolio

Latest

Essays & Explorations

Suspira Magazine
The Vampire Issue

Immortal Beloved: The Evolution of Vampiric Romance, on sale now

Atlas Obscura
10/20/2017
The Red House

Condensed version of The Outsider piece.

Queen Mob's Tea House
02/19/2016
The Privileged Mope - Queen Mob's Tea House

"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.

Interviews / Journalism / Reviews

SABAT Magazine
05/19/2022
Magical Britain

A review of Rob Wildwood's collection of 650 magical sites spanning England, Wales, and Scotland

The Wayward Post
02/13/2017
A Room With A Brew

My Florentine adventure and chance encounter with an inspiring coffee entrepreneur this past summer.

SABAT Magazine
08/26/2019
The Darker Side of Modern Magick

Talking "Cursed Britain: A History of Witchcraft and Black Magic in Modern Times" with author Thomas Waters

SABAT Magazine
05/09/2018
Artist Q&A: Hidden Velvet

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.

SABAT Magazine
08/11/2018
Tarot of the Hidden Star Q&A

I discovered the Tarot in my teens, at an age when you desperately want answers the corporeal world cannot provide...

PASTA+PLAGUE

PASTA+PLAGUE
08/28/2024
A (Sort-Of) Death In Venice

A seagull rescue mission, a street fight, a traumatized newlywed: all in a honeymoon crasher’s day’s work.

PASTA+PLAGUE
04/20/2020
The Gorgeous Horrors Of Villa De Vecchi

Murder, disappearances, a piano that plays by itself, Aleister Crowley -  welcome to one of Italy's most controversial haunted houses.

PASTA+PLAGUE
08/11/2023
Taxiderman: Q&A with Rossella Laeng

Explore the world of the Taxiderman, a rock n roll taxidermist in Padua, Italy who makes his living stuffing dead pets for grieving owners.

PASTA+PLAGUE
03/29/2023
A Feast of Folklore: Q&A with Ben Gazur

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.

Fiction

PULP Literature Press
05/02/2016
Black Blizzard

My award-winning short story about a Depression-era dustbowl family and the many ways magic can be twisted to corrupt or cope.

Black Dandy: Inagural Issue
10/15/2017
The Sin Eater Sings Blue Hawaii

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...

Scrutiny
01/14/2017
Skadi

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,...

FLAPPERHOUSE
04/14/2016
Doodlebug

A tale about a family of monstrous immortals squatting in "a part of London even London has no recollection of..."

Gone Lawn: Issue 20
01/15/2016
Melusine

No more little mermaids.

Poetry/Prose (Mobile reading not recommended, best viewed on desktop)

Crannóg Magazine
03/26/2021
"Heirloom," Issue 54

Irish, Galway-based literary magazine established in 2002.

Odyssey
07/09/2020
Mediterranean Poetry

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.

Quail Bell Magazine
02/12/2017
The Traits You Take

​Somewhere in your ancestral villa lives a woman who slices persimmons like she was born to handle knives and babies

Misfit Magazine
11/02/2015
Two Poems

Latin lovers and childhood remnants

Homestead Review
04/09/2016
Two Poems

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.

Eunoia Review
07/10/2015
Blonde Bronte

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...

Esoterica

Catland
03/22/2019
Venefica Magazine

Overjoyed to be included in Volume III of the insanely gorgeous Venefica Magazine, published through Brooklyn's Catland. Preorders available now!

SABAT Magazine
02/25/2019
Grimoire Glory: An Interview With Author Juliet Diaz

"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."

Witchery Press, now November Sage Herbarium
05/30/2018
Magick, Mental Health, and the Reluctant Warrior

“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.”

The School Of Witchery, Witchery Press
05/01/2017
Beltane's Fiery Blessings

"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.

Humor

Mixed Media

Three Rooms Press
03/15/2013
Maintenant 7: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing & Art (Copy) (Copy)

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.

L'Éphémère Review
08/26/2019
Photography by Emily Linstrom - L'Éphémère Review

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.

The Continental Review
11/01/2017
Anemone

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.

Nailed Magazine
Annabel | Nailed Magazine

"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.

Wicked Alice
Lavinia

"Lavinia," a self portrait inspired by Shakespeare's first produced play Titus Andronicus.

YouTube
01/27/2013
Radiance

"Radiance" by Snazz Mammoth featuring : Emily Linstrom Nicholas Adamski Director & DP: Brandon Herman Editor: Jackie Todd

Rogue Agent Journal
02/14/2016
Amore Fati

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...