Katie Alafdal
Bio
queer poet and visual artist. @leromanovs on insta
Achievements (1)
Stories (55/0)
Learning in the Time of Covid-19
In the beginning, it was just going to be for a summer, while children across the United States were catching up on the last few months of remote school. A lot of kids I knew needed extra help in the face of the pandemic, and their parents did not have the resources to guide their studies constantly.
By Katie Alafdal3 years ago in Fiction
The Murder Case that Inspired Agatha Christie’s "Murder on the Orient Express"
It was nearly ten in the evening when nanny Betty Gow went to check on her charge, a sweet, beaming boy with golden curls and plump cheeks. She had planned, perhaps, merely to look in on him as he slept, to ensure that all was well in the second-floor nursery.
By Katie Alafdal3 years ago in Criminal
What Happened to the Children of Marie Antoinette?
Most of us are at least in part familiar with the tragic history of the child queen Marie Antoinette, and her equally young and inexperienced husband Louis VXI of France. That she lived a life of unadulterated luxury and opulence while the people she governed languished in poverty until the Revolution broke out in 1789 is universally understood. And that she was eventually executed with her husband by guillotine is fairly infamous. But what about the four children she had before her execution? What became of them?
By Katie Alafdal3 years ago in FYI
- Top Story - August 2021
To Drown a PearTop Story - August 2021
Circe Elton was only twenty-two years old when she began working for The Facility. It was quite an honor to be sought out for a project of this caliber, especially given her youth, or so she had been told in one of the fifteen or so interviews that she ran through with her usual ease. Other people liked to tell her how proud of herself she ought to be at any given time-- an unconscious desire of inferior minds to assert some emotional control over a person they could not comprehend in the slightest. Other people did not know what to do when confronted by sheer, unadulterated genius. It made them doubt themselves, destabilized their over-inflated egos. But Circe did not care. In fact, she did not care about anyone at all.
By Katie Alafdal3 years ago in Fiction
Five Easy Mocktail Recipes
When I stopped drinking halfway through my junior year of college, I was worried about how I would sustain my social life in a world that seemed to revolve around drinking culture. None of my friends at that point were sober, and suddenly I was thrust into a world where I was the only one standing awkwardly at the end of a dance floor, overthinking every interaction. Frat parties and nights at the club with wasted friends became tedious, until I began to find new things to appreciate.
By Katie Alafdal3 years ago in Proof
What the Black Plague Can Teach Us About the Current Pandemic
In the later Middle Ages, the Black Plague swept across Europe, decimating approximately one-third of its population, although that figure is contested. The mysterious illness was spread by the usual vermin, rats and fleas, and moved amongst the human continent with no regard for rank, or wealth. Death it seemed, was the great equalizer, and morbidity abounded.
By Katie Alafdal3 years ago in FYI
The "Other" Bugatti
Most of us are familiar with the Bugatti Brand-- and the legacy of the unparalleled French luxury automobile manufacturer based in Molsheim that has delivered models from the Veyron to the Chiron to La Voiture Noire. After all, Bugatti is famously responsible for designs almost overwhelming in their aesthetic lushness. These are cars that exalt in striking colors and elegant lines-- the price attached is par for the course when one considers an engine that's subtle purr conceals its true power.
By Katie Alafdal3 years ago in Wheel
IT HAS TO GO OFF
Father had a 1902 model rifle Cartwright .22; the type of antiquated rifle that some proto-boy scout might have used as the beginning of the century gradually gained inertia. The handle was smoothed and red as cherry wood, and the trigger curved gracefully like a swan’s neck in the moments before it is broken. When I was a little girl, I would pretend the thing was a queer kind of bird, if birds could be wrought from metal and polished, rose-colored boughs. My father had inherited it from his father, and so it encompassed a certain nostalgic value, I assume.
By Katie Alafdal3 years ago in Fiction