Sex, Literature, and Rock n’ Roll

Welcome to the very first issue of SUB-LIT. I must say that this is a very exciting day for me—Casey and I talked about creating our own magazine from the day we met, but, to be frank, I suspected we’d never get it off the ground. I’m so appreciative of the support that our friends, family, and contacts at other journals have given us—thanks for the shout-outs, links, blogs, bulletins, and word of mouth advertisement. Kat and Mikey would express similar sentiments, I’m sure. I also have to thank our readers (Addison, Scott, and Chris), who signed up to help knowing that we could offer them absolutely nothing in return, and who were instrumental in our selection process for the issue. Thanks must be issued to the writers out there, too. We got an amazing response to our first call for work—many more submissions than we’d expected, in fact. People seem excited by the prospect of this journal. Most importantly, we ended up with a lot of friends on our Myspace page. Not that such tools of social networking evil are important, of course, (www.myspace.com/sublit), but it was pretty cool anyway.

Now that the virtual hugs are out of the way, I’d like to briefly address the “sub” in SUB-LIT, and the questions I’ve gotten about our magazine’s aesthetic. I’ve had many people tell me that they have work they’d like to send, but they’re not sure if it’s “subversive” enough for us. We cast a wide net when defining “sub lit”—the sense of underground, of separation from the mainstream, can be reflected in many ways. For some writers, it might simply be subject matter. That’s something I came up against quite often in graduate school—I wrote about sex and drugs and rock and roll, and had a hard time identifying magazines that were interested in publishing work about youth culture. I couldn’t find work like my own in the magazines that I admired, and it frustrated me. We want to give people a place to explore subjects that don’t fit with the mainstream, whether due to general impolite nature or something even more nefarious. Subject matter—and this is vital, so take notes—is not our only concern. We’re also interested in the experimental, in work that reflects forms not often showcased in mainstream magazines, and in art that is daring or willing defy the rules of genre and/or classification. Much is welcome here; don’t be afraid to take a chance on us.

I hope you enjoy the first issue. I look forward to your submissions for SUB-LIT number two, and would like to especially encourage artists and writers of creative nonfiction to submit.

Here’s to many more!

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