Tethered Literary

However far ahead we get, however far behind we're pushed, however hard we pull ourselves

away from the land, from our own histories, from each other, we are bound.
We are bound to the winged pollinators, to the green leaves, to all the people down the street and across oceans

who sustain us in a thousand impersonal, industrialized ways.
We are bound to the lies our ancestors told themselves, and the ones we tell ourselves now.

Tethered Literary is a place for all our bonds—for the ones that chafe, that choke, that we have tried to deny;

for the ones that keep us small, the ones that haunt us; but also for the bonds that hold and warm

and feed us and help us grow towards open air.

Summer 2026 | issue 4

RECENT WORK

In Conversation with Cassund Olivier

Interviewed by Ari Blatt, August 2026. When Tethered Literary first read Cassund Olivier’s work for our second issue, our editors were struck by the risks “General Biology for Girls” took in exploring the narrators’ experience with a relapse in disordered eating, and the way its experiments with form unearthed the roots of the condition in familial sexual abuse and homophobia, “...you can still hear great-grandmother, babies crying in the background, as she tells herself and

1 day ago6 min read

Eric Braman's Five Influences

Dead Dad Jokes by Ollie Schminkey is a killer collection of poetry that explores hardship with radical honesty, humility, and humor. As a queer writer it is a source of inspiration I return to when considering how to put my truth on the page with a balance of empowerment and kindness. The Wildnerness That Bears Your Name by James A. Pearson captures the wonders of nature in ways that widen the human experience; it's a collection I return to regularly for my own processing of

Apr 192 min read

WRITER SPOTLIGHT: Amy Shin Interview by Elizabeth Higgins

Our editors had the pleasure of reading seven of Amy’s poems for the journal, and were struck not only by their carefully-honed and evocative language, but also their movement between the personal and historical, and experimentation in form that we found striking and exciting. I was delighted to be able to interview Amy over email to discuss craft, influences, and more. Elizabeth: The poet Ellen Bass said, “Most days I don’t catch a poem,” and described much of the writing p

Apr 194 min read