The 2025 Detroit Metro Times Fiction Issue
This year’s theme, “documented/undocumented,” explores the boundaries between what is recorded and what is erased, what is visible and what is obscured, what is named and what is deliberately left out
Audio By Carbonatix
[
{
"name": "GPT - Leaderboard - Inline - Content",
"component": "35519556",
"insertPoint": "5th",
"startingPoint": "3",
"requiredCountToDisplay": "3",
"maxInsertions": 100,
"adList": [
{
"adPreset": "LeaderboardInline"
}
]
}
]
Five years ago, the Metro Times Fiction Issue began as a project produced in the wake of COVID-19. As we struggled collectively to navigate the isolation, grief, and uncertainty of a pandemic, we thought it important to reach out to our most public thinkers — writers and artists — to help navigate the uncharted waters of a modern world struggling with disease and the drastic changes it brought.
That plague also placed arts institutions like the Metro Times under attack. Advertising revenue for newspapers like this one was unsustainably diminished, concert venues sat empty, theaters were shuttered, bars and restaurants closed. Many of the spaces in which we gathered to share ideas and tell our stories were no longer available.
This special issue was born out of a deep commitment to creative solidarity and a belief that storytelling could offer connection, grounding, guidance, and resistance. As a community, we have learned to cope with the ongoing health crisis. We continue to face intentional attempts to disrupt and endanger our peace and liberated lives.
Today, with a renewed intensity, those with unfettered power and greed are determined to erase history, reject the evidence before our eyes and ears, disappear our neighbors, and dehumanize citizens. At its root is a disdain for two of our most sacred values: humanity and the truth.
These strategies are not new. Neither is our resistance. Art broadly — this Fiction Issue, in particular — is one way among many that, as a community, we tell our truths and celebrate our humanity.
During a time when creative expression is policed and arts funding is being shredded, we continue to curate this series as both an offering and a declaration: storytelling is not a luxury. It is culture. It is memory. It is how we survive and imagine a sustainable future.
Although this publication has always included a broad cross-section of Detroit’s creative voices, this year the Fiction Issue is dedicated entirely to artists of color. This decision reflects both a cultural mission and our shared belief that documenting our communities — on our terms — is necessary, sacred work.
This year’s theme, “documented/undocumented,” explores the boundaries between what is recorded and what is erased, what is visible and what is obscured, what is named and what is deliberately left out. We asked: What does it mean to be archived, to be seen, to leave a trace? What does it mean to be forgotten, to be misfiled, to be undocumented not only by the state, but by culture, by history, by art? The answers came back in a chorus of stories, poems, images, and hybrid forms.
The artists in this issue take us across many of those in-between spaces: between freedom and confinement, between Old Detroit and imagined futures, between the living and the spirit world. They write through gaps in public history. They make visible what might otherwise remain unseen.
Powerful forces would rather that we not explore these questions, would rather the nettlesome conscience remain hidden, would have these worlds of truth silenced. If these stories resonate with you, we hope you’ll help us keep the work going. Your support ensures that the voices in these pages — and those still waiting to be heard — have a place to live, breathe, and thrive. These pages carry the voices of those whose stories might not otherwise be documented.
In gratitude and solidarity,
Nandi Comer and Drew Philip
Co-Editors
This year’s visual arts consultant is Scheherazade Washington Parrish. Scheherazade Washington Parrish is an interdisciplinary artist, native Detroiter, and co-director of Detroit Lit.
The Metro Times Fiction Issue is a project of the Metro Times and Detroit Lit. This project is supported by Arts Midwest. Please consider donating to local Detroit narrative makers by making a tax-deductible contribution to Detroit Lit at alliedmedia.org/post/donate-to-detroit-lit.
“Cottonwood Creek” by Nora Chapa Mendoza
“Fair Trade” by Aaron Foley
“The Colored Section (after Gary Simmons’ sculpture: Balcony Seating Only)” by La Shaun phoenix Moore
“In The Silence of the Ruins, We Speak” by Ackeem Salmon
“Thin Air” by Jeni De La O
“In th Mornings” by V Efua Prince
“More Than 1 Thing.” by Joel Fluent Greene
“Sacred” by Brittany Rogers
“Crossing” by Sherina Sharpe
“Smoking with Emmett Till” by Lucianna Putnam
“ancestry.com reveals i am 24% spaniard” by jassmine parks
“The Dream of a Passenger in Peril” by Joshua Thaddeus Rainer
“Séance” by Zig Zag Claybourne
“SECOND HAND SMOKE” by Satori Shakoor
“Untitled” by Lauren Williams
“The Cameras are Always Rolling Until…” by Natasha T Miller
“The New Detroit, circa 2115” by Kahn Santori Davison
“Where Dreams Gather Dust” by Na Forest Lim
The print edition of the 2025 Fiction Issue is set to publish June 25.
