Our Deal ig
Sitting underneath a patio in an abandoned cafe, we were overcome with a vision for the future of the literary arts. Then we decided to do this instead. A bald eagle flew over and we realized we had to make this everyone’s problem. As insects ate away at our skin, we sang songs of the future and the singular lyric was “wiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrreeeeeworrrrrrmrmmrmmmmmmmrmmrmmmmm” and now we bring whatever this is to you.
We’re like the Paris Review but there’s worms (they might not be real worms, they have a lot of legs). We want to publish work we've never seen before, especially from under represented and authentic voices. We're dedicated to weird and teethy and whatever rotten milk smells like. We're hoping to collaborate with you on the terrors that keep you up at night and make and publish work that is as silly and terrible as it can be. We want to hear about maggots’ marital issues and spend the rest of the night crying about them. We want to carry the maggots with us, always. We want the jam you’ve kept in the back of your fridge for the last four months that you can’t bring yourself to throw away: the best of your worst, the poems you wrote at two am thinking they were pretty good before realizing they were about dancing cheetos, everything great that's just disturbing enough to be awful.
The Ones Who Did This
Elizabeth Keller
Co-Founder and Editor in Chief
Elizabeth Keller is a writer from Vancouver, Washington and a freshman at Columbia University. She is a YoungArts Finalist in novel writing, and she won a Gold Medal for Writing Portfolio from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. She has also been recognized by 1455 Literary Arts. Her work has been published in JAKE, Solstice, Movable Type, YoungArts Anthology, and Crashtest. In her free time, she now does this. Also she eats grass, tries to play the penny whistle, and hangs out with her typewriter, Maude.
Elizabeth’s favorite work is surreal, funny, experimental in form or content. She loves work that incorporates collage, found text, or research in interesting and unexpected ways. She doesn’t love writing without emotional stakes, anything that feels cliche or inauthentic, or sans serif font.
Kaydance Rice
Co-Founder and Editor in Chief
Kaydance Rice is a writer from Grand Rapids, Michigan and an incoming student at Princeton University. She has been recognized both regionally and nationally by the Scholastic Art and Writing awards as well as the Poetry Society of America. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in the Taco Bell Quarterly, YoungArts Anthology, Room, voicemail poems, and Full Mood Magazine. She’s the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Surging Tide Magazine, a prose reader for the Adroit Journal, the 2023 Co-Editor in Chief of The Interlochen Review, and for some reason decided to do this too. In her free time, Kaydance enjoys rambling about existentialism, playing the viola, and spending time with her plants.
Kaydance’s favorite work is chaotic and intricate but genuine. She loves things that scream quietly for several hours straight, things that are mundane but expressive. The work that stands out to her tends to be filled with voice that's messy and has the confidence to be human and to experiment. She loves ekphrasis, work about eating bugs, stream of consciousness, and anything strange without apology. She’s not a fan of cliche, ambiguous language, and sans serif font.