New Lit on the Block :: Jelly Squid Magazine
If you’re looking for writing that’s playful and unconventional (maybe even a little mysterious), truly new works that stay with you long after you’ve read the final line, and a publication that makes you excited for each next issue, then click on over to Jelly Squid. Publishing three online issues per year, Jelly Squid Magazine accepts all types of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and artwork, as well as all hybrid forms in between. “We really like to see – and would like to see more of – work that’s unique and experimental,” says Editor Mo Buckley Brown.
Even the name is reflective of this mission. “‘Jelly’ and ‘squid’ are both words that aren’t terribly uncommon,” Brown says, “but they have unique sounds individually, and together, they form a playful combination that felt a little unconventional. We thought this name captured our hopes for what the magazine would be – playful and unconventional, and maybe even a little mysterious.”
Sharing as Survival & Hope
In their introduction to the inaugural issues, the editors write, “Jelly Squid is purely a labor of love. Our goal is not profit nor popularity, not acclaim nor admiration; we simply believe that making things and sharing them with others is a crucial act of survival. Not only survival, but hope; every time one person takes the time to make something, to take an idea from the mind and the heart into reality, we all become stronger. To hope for something – desire something – is a lonely task. Our goal is to make things a little less lonely – to weave together individual acts of hope into the biggest, greatest tapestry we can. To, stitch by stitch, remind all of you – and ourselves – that all hope is not lost.”
“As young writers,” Brown shares, “we wanted to create a space that allowed emerging and previously unpublished writers to feel confident in sharing their work. We’ve been privileged to be able to spend time in undergraduate writing workshops surrounded by the work of our peers; now that one of us has graduated and the other is close to completing her degree, we wanted to facilitate a way for us to continue engaging with that kind of work in a different way. We started this publication with the idea that, rather than being authority figures, we’re creating an opportunity to uplift the work of our peers and help other writers like us feel as though their work matters. Our mission isn’t solely to promote work by young writers, or work from writers that haven’t yet had their voices heard (though this is one of the things we make an effort to do), but overall to participate in a type of publishing that feels open, welcoming, and communal, which is something we’re still learning how to build.”
Editorial Expertise & Submissions
Editor Mo Buckley Brown is herself a writer and visual artist currently based in Seattle, WA. She earned a BA in English with a Creative Writing focus from Western Washington University in December of 2023, and her work has been featured in publications such as Jeopardy Magazine and Wasteland Review. Editor Anya Jane Perez is a writer from Washington State and a student at Western Washington University. She specializes in poetry and is a film critic for the blog Heavy Ceramics.
For writers interested in submitting works, Brown explains, “This publication is currently a two-person team [Brown and Perez], so we do all of the submission managing and reading. We only accept submissions sent to our email; once a submission is received, the submission’s info goes into a spreadsheet and the piece itself goes into a folder to be read later. We both read all the submissions, and we don’t respond to any submissions until we’ve read and discussed every single one. Not only are we evaluating work based on quality and theme applicability, but we’re evaluating pieces on how well they come together to form a cohesive issue. For this reason, our response time tends to be about three months. We don’t provide feedback, but we encourage submitters to submit again if we felt that the work they sent us was what we tend to look for.”
On Theming a Lit Mag
“Since our issues are themed, we have an initial creative vision – or maybe just an overall feeling we want to express with each issue – going into our editorial process, so we look carefully for work that reflects that theme or feeling in an unexpected way. The theme is more of a prompt than a requirement, and it’s the pieces themselves that solidify that theme – when we start selecting pieces and putting an issue together, we know it’s working when all the pieces come together to form a cohesive issue that becomes a piece of art in and of itself. We’re not just choosing pieces based on what works best individually, but also analyzing them for their ability to function as part of a whole.”
“Possibly the most difficult part of beginning a new issue cycle,” Brown admits, “is choosing a theme. It’s hard, but we know when the right one presents itself. We take some time to take stock of our lives, really analyze what’s meaningful and noteworthy to us right now; the theme of our second issue is ‘passage,’ which we chose after discussing how the changing of the weather – the approaching shift from summer to fall and then to winter – seems to be moving in tandem with the turning-over of our lives, the sense of moving through one stage of life into another. Our creative vision for each issue so far has really been based on the aspects of life that we find worthwhile to recognize.”
Fresh & Unique Reading
For Jelly Squid readers, Brown says, “They can expect to find the work we publish to be fresh and unique. When accepting submissions, we look for writing and art that really feels new – and as we make an effort to highlight the work of emerging and previously unpublished authors and artists, we’re lucky to say that we often find work that surprises us in new and wonderful ways. To us, each issue is a singular creative endeavor; from our themes to our web design to how we put an issue together, no two issues will be the same, and we’re always adapting and changing to suit our ever-growing creative vision. Expect this publication to feel not only like a selection of art but also a piece of art itself – at least, this is our hope.”
The first issue of Jelly Squid features seventeen contributors: Annalise Smith, Stefan Karlsson, Margaux Williamson, Peter Cashorali, Aden Curry, Evan de Jong, Max Paradise, Guadalupe Veneers, HK Novielli, Hannah Lilith, Simone Marie-Rose, Jamie Rapport, Patrick Keedy Brown, Chris Barrett, Monica Nunan, Robert Cunningham, and Julie P. Parks.
Slow Reading & Local Gems
Reflecting on the process of starring a literary publication, Brown expresses how much careful consideration goes into their work. “I think one of the greatest lessons we’ve learned is to re-read, re-read, and re-read again as many times as we need. We each probably read each submission at least four times, if not many, many more (especially in the final stages of the selection process) – a piece can really change depending on when, where, and how one reads it. There were many cases in which pieces we initially loved turned out to not be the right fit for an issue thematically or style wise, and some pieces we initially didn’t expect to include ended up blossoming with more time spent with them and ended up becoming some of our favorite selections. Our initial reactions to pieces became less and less important the more we read, and we learned how worthwhile it is to slow down and take a lot of time with each piece.”
“I think it’s worthwhile to note,” Brown adds, “that through this process, we’ve also learned – or been reminded – that great writing truly exists everywhere, and that it’s worth the effort to seek it out. Though we received a great variety of submissions from people who found us online, some of the most special and unique work we were sent was from people who just found us locally, who’d seen posters we put up in their area and took a chance submitting their work. It’s amazing to think that there are incredible artists and writers out there that if they hadn’t happened upon one of our posters or heard about us by word of mouth, we wouldn’t have had the opportunity to see their work. We hope to get the word out a bit beyond where we’re located – we love to uplift voices local to us from the Pacific Northwest, but we’d like to get the word out in other parts of the country (and beyond!) in ways that aren’t just online so that people who might not be engaging with the submission and publication process online might still find us and send us their work.”
