Magazine: The Q&A Queer Zine
We are small zine staffed by lgbtq+ writers and visual artists
Talking with: Christina Giska, co-editor and Cloë Di Flumeri, co-editor
If you could sum up your magazine’s vibe in six words or less, what would they be?
Christina: Hmm, this is a good question. Maybe, “queer as art” ? A lot of the arts historically have been used by queer individuals to express themselves in the limited ways they could, and we’re continuing a long history of tradition of LGBTQ+ zines and magazines.
Cloe: eclectic, stunning, community, purple, flux, queer
Editors notoriously don’t get paid much (if at all) and tend to take a lot of flack. So, why do it? Is there a moment you can remember in your time with your magazine where you thought: ‘this, this is why I do it’?
Christina: I do it because I enjoy it. This isn’t my job, and frankly I don’t want it to be. I like reading submissions and discussing them with the masthead and being able to magnify voices. Being around like-minded individuals who care about the zine as much as I do brings me a bunch of joy.
Are there any common mistakes writers make when they submit to your magazine?
Christina: There were some issues originally when people didn’t realize that we only accepted unpublished work, and that self-posting the work on social media counted as being “published” to us. We’ve tried to make it a lot more clear since then though!
Cloe: Yes! We most typically get prose submissions that are too long, packets that contain more work than we accept from individual contributors or pieces that ignore our requests for content warnings. It is really important to us that our submitters send us work that follows our guidelines, especially because it lets us know that they are engaged enough with the submissions process that they took the time to do the research.
The lit mag scene is massive. What did you want to bring to the community with your magazines that is different from what others are offering?
Christina: I asked our masthead what they thought about this, and honestly I think our member, Emilee, worded it perfectly.
“Queer voices and literature is so deeply necessary because of the increasing censorship and book bans in this country. For so long queer literature wasn’t even on bookshelves and now we’re able to post it on a platform that can be seen by so many people. We’re publishing work that generations of queers before us couldn’t fathom sharing or being shown in public and we’re not gonna stop doing so. The times may be reverting, but our Zine is only moving forward.”
Cloe: We started our lit mag for the purpose of creating community with other LGBTQ+ writers and editors. As Christina and I were involved in other literary magazines at our university, we realized that there was a huge lack of queer expression. This was something we felt empowered to remedy.
What is your ideal cover letter to see for a submission? Simple and sweet? Professional? A few kind words peppered in?
Christina: I always appreciate any cover letters/introductions that the authors send in, but honestly speaking, they aren’t something we mandate for submissions. The majority of the masthead doesn’t even see them. As long as you include any necessary content warnings for your submission, and clarify anything that might need clarification, feel free to introduce your work in whatever way seems right to you!
Is there a specific kind of project you haven’t seen in your current submissions that you’d love to see come in?
Christina: As a prose writer, I always appreciate short story submissions!
Cloe: One really exciting aspect of issue no.4 was publishing “To Everything,” by Laura Marden. The majority of submissions we receive have some sort of coming-of-age narrative and are either fiction or creative non-fiction. Laura Marden’s piece was a welcome break from our traditional submissions, and was, well, awesome. I would place the story’s genre as being a sort of queer spec-fic, as Marden really effortlessly creates this near-future/futuristic microcosm inhabited by a lesbian couple, their family, and their farm animals. I would be really happy to see more submissions doing the work of world-building, and am especially excited by the idea of having more sci-fi and spec-fic pieces– maybe even some horror. This is not to say that we don’t want coming-of-age creative non-fiction pieces, but that we also consider what stories our zine is telling, on top of the quality demonstrated in writing. If we receive three really beautifully crafted coming-of-age stories, we ultimately will refrain from publishing them all in order to maintain the thematic balance of the issue.
Are there magazines you see as literary siblings, mentors, aspirations, besties, etc.?
Christina: We were actually able to interview Luiza Flynn-Goodlet from The Foglifter Press, which is a LGBTQ+ magazine that has been in the field a lot longer than us! It definitely gave us a lot to think about and I look up to their magazine a lot. : )
Cloe: I personally idolize the digital micro-magazine, Beestung. From their visual aesthetics, to the body of work they publish– I am a huge fan of theirs. It’s also worth mentioning that the publication that made me realize what we were missing, inspiring the creation of our zine, is The Laughing Medusa based out of Boston College. A few of my friends were working on their team in 2020 and I thought, wow I wish I could be involved in something like that… And here we are three years later!
What do you see as a deal-breaker in a submission, regardless of the quality of the writing? (For example, poor formatting, vulgarity, etc.)
Christina: I don’t think I’d be comfortable publishing something that has excessive/gratuitous violence. I just don’t think that’s the type of thing that we are trying to showcase.
Cloe: The reading cycle for our previous issue allowed our editing staff to draw some boundaries surrounding content that are now reflected in our guidelines. We really hope that submitters read these content guidelines, as they reflect our team’s personal triggers and have a real bearing on our mental health.
As a general rule, our editing staff rejects all forms of bigotry. It is not uncommon for writers to problematically use stereotyping and slurs in their submissions to our zine. These pieces do not make it past the first round of editing. We are generally intolerant of ignorance.
Apart from bigotry, we have received pieces in the past that present problematic sexual relationships, whether explicitly or implicitly calling on themes of sexual violence and exploitation using non-critical, romanticized, or normalized language. Similarly, these pieces do not make it past the first round of editing.
This is not to say that we do not publish works surrounding trauma. We do believe that there are healthy ways to present distressing themes in writing, and we value our ability to amplify and represent the unique experiences of the LGBTQ+ community surrounding oppression and violence. For these pieces, we simply ask for content warnings for our editing staff as well as future readers.
Is there a part of the submissions process that writers tend to fret over that isn’t all that important?
Christina: I feel like some people get very anxious about the email that they send their work with. Frankly, the way our zine is organized, only one or two people even see the emails. The rest of our masthead only ever sees the piece itself. Of course, other zines might work differently, but I wouldn’t worry when it comes to ours.
If you could bring one writer back to life to write a story for your magazine, who would it be, and why?
Christina: Honestly, I would bring back one of the many queer people in history who were never allowed to be themselves. Even if the piece was, technique wise, terrible, I think giving that chance to be open to someone who never got it during their life, would be incredibly rewarding.
What is a recent piece published in your magazine that you think would make a great short film?
Christina: I think “into the willows . . . “ by Jeffery Blanford would be an amazing short film! I love their artwork and seeing a short film about ghost, animated in her style, would be wonderfully cool to watch.
Cloe: Definitely Chloe Ackerman’s “Greta,” which follows the story of a trans girl’s struggles living in a small European town. To avoid spoilers, the story ends on something of a cliff-hanger with the protagonist’s next steps left to the reader’s imagination. I want to know what she does next, and I think now more than ever stories surrounding the experiences of trans children and young adults are increasingly important. The story also evokes a sense or aesthetic of a dark, Grimm-esque fairytale that I think would translate really nicely into a film.
There are the well-worn (for good reason) pieces of advice like “read submissions guidelines” and “read the journal you’re submitting to,” but do you have any other advice for prospective writers looking to get their work published?
Christina: I’m stealing this advice from someone else on the internet, but try to get a certain amount of rejections. If you set a goal to be rejected 50 times before the year ends (for example), then you’re more likely to send work out without overthinking every single thing about it. Fear of rejection makes a lot of people not try. By setting a goal to get 50 rejections, instead of 50 acceptances, it lessens that fear. And you might be surprised at how many places don’t reject you in the process.
If you could add one question to this interview, what would it be, and how would you answer it?
Christina: I guess I would ask about submissions, and I would mention that submissions for our fourth issue are open from March 1st to April 30th, 2023.