Editor / Writer / Graphic Designer
Julian's work has been published in Huizache: The Magazine of a New America, The Acentos Review, Flash Fiction Online, Chestnut Review, Rumble Fish Quarterly, Blue Marble Review, and F(r)iction Lit, among other places, and his favorite genres to write are contemporary fiction, magical realism, and historical fiction.
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Banner artwork previously published in The Acentos Review, October 2022.
Fiction: Genesis
On the first day, God creates trains.
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Bachmann Trains. Walther Trains. Atlas Trains, you name it. Trains of all shapes and sizes, laser cut with the finest precision. Trains shipped from top-drawer German manufacturers, from the same sculptors that designed Miniatur Wunderland. Aren’t they beautiful, these trenes de Dios? Aren’t they perfect? And here they are, at God’s fingertips, just waiting to be assembled.
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Fiction: Café Negro
Barahona, the streets were paved with bones, but we walked them like they was nothing but brick. The church bells were dull. The walls white and pasty, como pastel de tres leche. We had come to witness our family history, me and Papi and Mami and Natalia. We had come to see for ourselves, the place where our bisabuelas had been whipped and chained and raped.
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In a way, it was kind of disappointing...
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Artwork by Julian Riccobon. Previously published in The Acentos Review, October 2022.
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Fiction: Zipperman
Sometimes the Zipperman likes to think that his job is sacred; so predictable in its routine, that it has become a solemn ritual. Every day like clockwork, he climbs into the driver’s cabin of his tram and sets the machinery in motion while San Diego still sleeps. And then, at a speed of 3.8 miles per hour, he rumbles his way along the arched spine of the Coronado Bridge, soaking up the world in slow-motion.
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Artwork by Julian Riccobon.
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Fiction: Paradise Pharmacy
Cashback, the magic word. Like wishing for more wishes.
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In Paradise Pharmacy, you buy yourself a toffee, thirty-three cents, and then you ask for twenty back; those bloody bloody Andrew Jacksons. You swipe Mama’s card, that blue plastic genie, and the cashier simply gives you the cash. No questions asked.
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It’s like stealing cajeta from a baby...
Artwork by Julian Riccobon. Previously published in The Acentos Review, October 2022.
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Fiction: Secondhand Smoke
When Mother Earth wakes up with a fever, she knows that something is wrong.
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She wakes in a cold sweat, her ice caps slipping into the sea. The heat swirls around her, thick with greenhouse gases. Her head swirls, too.
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“You’ve grown a cancerous tumor,” the doctor tells her when she arrives at the hospital. “It is called Mankind, and you don’t have long to live..."
Artwork by Julian Riccobon.
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Publication History
​​​Short Fiction
​Forthcoming​​​​
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Footnote #8: A Literary Journal of History – The Last I Saw of Crane Girl
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Footnote #6: A Literary Journal of History – Leaving the Nest (reprint), Baby Steps (reprint)
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2024​​​
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The Art of Chestnut Review Volume 1, Fall 2024 – Ghetto Birds
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The Art of Chestnut Review Volume 1, Fall 2024 – The Things You Learn Too Late
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2023​
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Blue Marble Review, June 2023 – Paradise Pharmacy
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Flash Fiction Online, July 2023 – Café Negro (reprint)
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Blue Marble Review, September 2023 – Zipperman
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Huizache #10, Fall 2023 – Genesis
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2022
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The Acentos Review, October 2022 – Café Negro
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2020
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Rumble Fish Quarterly, Summer + Fall 2020 – Wrong Side of the Tracks
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2019
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F(r)iction Lit's Dually Noted Series, June 2019 – Secondhand Smoke
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2018​​
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Polyphony Lit, Volume 14 – Assimilation, Turtleboy (Claudia Ann Seaman Award Runner-Up)
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2018 – Baby Steps, Tigers and Elephants
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2017
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2017 – Leaving the Nest, Respawn
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2016
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2016 – The Dedicated, Characterization
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2015
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2015 – 80M
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Poetry
Forthcoming
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Footnote #8: A Literary Journal of History – Rolling Thunder, Some Sources Say That She Died on the Guillotine But Most Agree She Was Shot
2022
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The Acentos Review, October 2022 – Chino's Got a Gun, Torpedoes, Jacinto Castillo