HOPKINSON: Tell me a little bit about Stone of Madness. How/why was it originally started?
L Scully: SoM was founded during long quarantine days in the early summer of 2020. Olivia and I, together with our first reader and dear friend Carolina (who is EIC of MixedMag) had the idea to start a literary magazine. We are in an incredibly mutually supportive writing group together and just really encouraged one another to found our respective magazines. As queer people and writers ourselves, we also wanted an accessible space for queer, trans, and neurodiverse writers. I personally really wanted to create a buoyant literary community for mentally ill and trans writers in particular, though so many identities are celebrated at Stone of Madness. We wanted a safer and more accessible space to share work.
Olivia: Yes, what L said! L and Carolina are the kind of people who put dreams into action which gave me the confidence to believe that we could actually do this. I think we played off of each others’ strengths and perspectives in the founding of Stone of Madness, and have continued to keep that kind of encouragement and collaboration going as we’ve grown.
HOPKINSON: Who is your target reader audience?
L: Stone of Madness is for everyone! We have a wonderful, supportive readership, though we really do pride ourselves on bringing literature to our fellow queer/trans/neurodivergent readers and writers.
Cavar: I echo L! I want Stone of Madness to also be a space for young, emerging writers to go and feel not only seen and heard, but welcomed into the conversation. I’m so pleased to see that we have readers and submitters who are previously unpublished, as well as many in high school –– SoM is the radically-open, literarily-inclined, queer, disabled community I longed for growing up but never knew was possible. We hope to find readers for whom our mission is equally vital.
HOPKINSON: What do you wish you’d see submitted, but rarely comes in?
Cavar: Hybrid and experimental work, for sure! I’d love to see visually-focused submissions, too; Issue 7 (our first dedicated “hybrid” issue) features some of these, and I’m really excited to continue pushing the boundaries of the literary. Really, I’d be thrilled to see more speculative, strange, and edge-pushing approaches to experiences too often confined to confessional or autobiographical narratives.
L: Experimental work!
Olivia: Definitely experimental and hybrid. I’m a fan of what I call “prosetry” – sort of prose, sort of poetry. So I’d love to read some prose poem type work.
HOPKINSON: What are some of your favorite lit mags/journals?
Cavar: My personal favorites include Split Lip Magazine, Outlook Springs, DIAGRAM, Bodega Magazine, Ploughshares, Strange Horizons, Whale Road Review, and The Offing. These are all magazines I’ll (try to) drop everything and dig into as soon as another issue comes out. I also want to give a shoutout to new sinews, a really amazing hybrid/experimental/post-literary (?) experiment that I am so, SO excited about, and SICK Magazine, which releases a beautiful print issue annually.
We’re also perpetually excited about Mixed Mag, piloted by SoM reader-alum Carolina Meurkens. We’re actually doing a workshop series in collaboration with the magazine –– find out more here!
Olivia: Agree! I’ll add Longleaf Review to this conversation, too!
HOPKINSON: What is your favorite part of being on staff with Stone of Madness?
L: We truly have the most wonderful team. We have two co-EICs, a fabulous managing editor, and three wildly talented readers. Our team is committed to treating work with great care that we also show to one another. I love the work we get to read and I love the queer community that exists within our editorial board.
Olivia: The support and community we have at Stone of Madness really is something special. I feel this both in our readership/contributors and with our staff. It’s important to me that our staff feels comfortable voicing their thoughts and experiences, and that we all feel understood.
Cavar: I came onto the SoM team as a reader back in the summer of 2020, when we were still a little baby magazine. L and Olivia were enthusiastic, warm, and welcoming from the start, and at the end of the summer, invited me to be Managing Editor. Every day that I work on the magazine, I’m grateful I said “yes” –– we’ve developed a real culture of humor, intimacy, and kindness here. I’m proud to say that I work on a magazine that my writer-self would be proud to be published in!
HOPKINSON: Where can we send submissions?
stoneofmadnesspress@gmail.com. You can also contact us there with any questions or concerns about the magazine!
Click here to read submission guidelines.
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: February 15, 2021 (monthly from 1st – 15th)
SUBMISSION FEE: None
OPEN TO: queer, trans, and neurodiverse writers
NOTE: “We often publish work related to disability/illness, queer and trans identity/relationships, and navigating trauma, and we rarely take hard “genre” work. That said, if your gut’s telling you ‘yes,’ hit the send button.”
FORMS: Poetry, prose, hybrid, surprise us!
FORMAT: Online
ISSUE FREQUENCY: Monthly
SUBMISSION METHOD: Email
SIMULTANEOUS SUBMISSIONS: Yes
AVERAGE RESPONSE TIME: 7 days
PAYMENT: “None at the moment. Our aim is to become a paying market by the end of 2021, a goal we hope to achieve in tandem with some SoM-exclusive merch….keep your eyes peeled!”
SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter
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