A shelf of stories.
A work in progress.
The streets behave so much differently in the absence of traffic. They possess their stillness fully. You can cross the road anywhere you like, not just at the corners. I didn’t see anyone else. No joggers. No dogs on leashes, sniffing at the wet ground. The rain left a thin flesh of mud on the sidewalks, and since I didn’t come across even little cat prints or bike tire marks—I knew I was the first creature to emerge into the day. The first surveyor of the storm. The loneliness of it all soothed me.
She double checks with me. “La lenguas? You want tongue?” What she means to say is, white people don’t order tongue burritos. I just nod and wait for my order. The dimly-lit, late-night Mexican joint just a few blocks from my house is nearly empty. Only a young couple and I occupy the small dining room. I think it’s past midnight. At least one. But I'm hungry.
I gave myself a constraint where each entry must take place on a single neighborhood street. Many of the poems are inside the main characters’ home, but often they are outside in the front lawn, or back yard, or just down the street visiting a neighbor. While most of the pieces weren’t written with this concept in mind, once I found my through-line, I was able to collage and re-work them into some type of (hopefully visible) narrative, all the while writing pieces to connect the dots and fill in some necessary world-building details.
Expected Ship Date: 12/11/23
Paperback. Approx 70 pages of poetry, prose, art, and other creative work from chronically ill writers & artists.
Reformatting the Pain Scale exists as an empowering and cathartic outlet to express pain outside of the medical binary.
Created & Edited by: Alyssa Goldberg
Cover Art: Robert Frede Kenter
Contributors: Amy Shimshon-Santo, Angi Farnsworth, Anthony Godino, Beck Carter, Bella Rotker, Caitlin Cowan, Chris Torossian, Eli Shroom, Ellen Harrold, Elyssa Tappero, Emily Hockaday, Erin Donohue, Hameedah Aruwa, Hannah Siden, Hilary Brown, Jeffrey Zable, Kimmy Joy, Lia Pas, Madalina Boboc, Maia Joy, Mark DeCarteret, Marty Jaye, Melissa McEver Huckabay, Robert Frede Kenter, Sarah Klein, Shannon Clem, Victoria Oh, and Vivian Delchamps.
The NEW Olney Magazine is BIGGER & BETTER than every before! We’ve upscaled the physical size of the magazine to the traditional letter format (8.5” X 11”), and we now exist as a paying market. Every artist is paid.
In addition to housing 70+ pages submitted pieces of POETRY, FICTION, PROSE/HYBRID, & ART from creators around the world, it will also feature contributed articles from our staff editors including Issue 5’s cover story about Lee University and the on campus treatment of its LGTBQ+ students, by Lee graduate and senior editor Jennifer C. Martin.
Also new to Olney is a 5 page MINI-MAGAZINE that exists WITHIN Olney Magazine. We teamed up with the former editorial team behind the local Ohio culture magazine called “Stank!” to deliver a concentrated dose of the bizarre world of Stank! Magazine—A zombie-zine, living on like a symbiote inside Olney.
Poetry: NOAH BERLATSKY KELLY CUTCHIN BOB KING FATIHAH QUADRI ENIOLA BENJAMIN DAVIS MACK ROGERS CANDICE KELSEY DIANA MALEK TAMARA PANICI MADDY RINDFLEISCH RYAN ROWLAND WHITNEY HANSEN ANDREA KRAUSE
JO WALLACE
S. M. LAWLESS KAIT QUINN JASON MELVIN
VISUAL ART RICHARD FOX JACLYN YAP HELENA PANTSIS M.R. MANDELL SUJASH PURNA RAFIAT LAMIDI SYREETA MUIR
PROSE
S.H. WOODGEARD MITCH RUSSELL JOSHUA JONES LOFFLIN MATHEW GOSTELOW ASHTON CYNTHIA CLARKE LYNNE SCHMIDT AIMÉE KEEBLE
Since we sold out of our print copies, but received multiple requests after that for access to the issue. We decided to make the issue available digitally! 100% of the proceeds from these digital sales goes towards the benefit of our current charity partner.
Digital Print Edition. 56 pages. Poetry. Prose. Art. Photography. Stories. Bread.
June 2021. The FIRST issue of Olney Magazine.
Edited by: Brandon Noel & Tony Wade
Photography Edited By: Bernadetta Watts
Cover Design by: Angelo Maneage
Cover Photo by: Arfil Pajarillaga
Contributors: Aaron Scobie, Kelly Hambly, Camille Ferguson, John Grey, Jason Melvin, Kevin McIlvoy, Jared Beloff, Luke Larkin, Charles Hermesmann, Pepper Cunningham, Kyla Houbolt, Katie Kemple, Whitney Hansen, Olaitan Humble, Kimberly Wolf, Steve Barichko, a.a. khaliq, Clem Flowers, Patrick Younger, Anuja Ghimire, Dia Roth, Sam Kuhns, Aimée Keeble, V. Freeman, Madeleine Corley, Amanda Rabaduex, Ryan Rowland, klipschutz, Ashley Holmes & Maddy Rindfleisch.
Photography Contributors: Louis Staeble, Joe Lord, George Buid, Diana Dalton, Kimberly Wolf, Joeseph L. Etchingham, Hon Chau, Carl Henneman, Arfil Pajarillaga, Oladosu Michael Emerald, Sulola Imran Abiola, S. Elizabeth Sigler, Brandon Oleksy & John-Michael Jalonen
At the core of every story is something nameless and beyond the reach of language. The awareness that it is there, though hidden, is enough…
It has to be enough.
—Maj Ragain