Feature

Dropped Threads: Canada’s Alternative Writing and Culture Magazines

by Nichole McGill

The day I set aside to write this article was the day my issue of Front & Centre arrived in the mail — my payment for having a story published in it. Two years ago, this international-now-based in Ottawa literary journal of “bold new fiction” would have arrived in 8½ by 11 magazine format complete with slick cover and ads. Today, the new Front & Centre has downsized to a chapbook format, each cover of this issue marked with unique artwork provided by the editor’s three-year-old son. It’s an admittedly more intimate touch than a glossy cover, and in the perilous world of Canadian independent literary magazines, a sign that the magazine is alive and well.

It may come as no surprise that even in the world of Canadian literary magazines, there seem to be two solitudes: the seemingly stable bastion of mainstream magazines, as represented by the Grains, the Geists, and the Arc Poetrys, and the magazines that promise grit — the undertone of subcultures, the urban tales, and yes, stories that reflect the slow, steady rise of Canadian erotica (See “You Said Beaver”). The latter is offered by the Front & Centres, the Liticaphobias, the Kiss Machines, and the Blood & Aphorisms. The writers for these “alternative” or “independent” litmags have never read Margaret Atwood’s Survival: Themes in Canadian Literature nor are they interested in doing so. To take a cue from the Edmonton-based Urban Graffiti recent call for submissions: “We welcome work Canada Customs agents would turn back at the border.”

On the surface, it may seem that venues for “brave new fiction” are alive and well but the reality speaks otherwise. Liticaphobia is difficult to find on the stands, Front & Centre reduced its print run from 400 copies annually to a more manageable 150, and Blood & Aphorisms — arguably once one of Canada’s most vibrant new writing literary magazines — just emerged this February from a two-year hibernation. Aside from the successful Vancouver-based subTERRAIN, an alternative magazine that now brands itself simply as “a literary magazine,” the pickings for juicy, different new writing are slim.

“It has always amazed me that there are so few [independents] in Canada,” says Ottawa-based Front & Centre editor Matthew Firth, who started the magazine seven years ago while living in the U.K. Before that he produced the lit-zine Black Cat 115. “Right now we seem to be at a real low point.”

A list compiled by Firth documents the plight of several Canadian alternative magazines that have gone by the wayside in the last decade: Ink, Journal of Contemporary Literary Stuff, QWERTY, Zygote, Necessary Fiction, and Siren to name a few. A far more difficult exercise, however, is scrounging up names of new independents that have replaced them. Other than Liticaphobia, produced by the ever-mobile Nathaniel G. Moore, the enduring Urban Graffiti, and the art-lit-pop cultural hybrid Kiss Machine, the mind draws a blank. Writers are working in a much different landscape than they were five years ago when Concrete Forest, McClelland & Stewart’s anthology of urban Canadian fiction, hit the shelves and when many of the now-defunct independents could still be found in discerning book and magazine stores.

“It’s generally not an optimistic time to be self-promoting,” agrees Moore, who began Tupperware Sandpiper in 1999 and now runs Liticaphobia out of Toronto. “The small press world is microscopic, and we are but emulating magazine store aesthetic, and in general, failing miserably on one hand, and producing nice things on the other.”

Moore points to Montreal’s Fish Piss, and Toronto’s Pas de chance and Kiss Machine, as being among the more successful indies but adds “[t]hey are never rewarded in the ways in which they ultimately could be.”

Aside from the usual suspects — the dearth of grants for small magazines and the fact that their magazines appeal to a specialized, sometimes difficult-to-find audience — Firth and Moore both point to a lack of initiative on the part of writers and editors to create opportunities for up-and-coming writing.

“I think part of the problem is that people don’t know there is more to being a writer than passively sending your stories out to magazines. There are not enough people thinking they have a stake in it,” says Firth who started Black Cat 115 as a reaction to receiving rejection slips from magazines like Blood & Aphorisms. Firth says the inspiration for Black Cat 115 was to provide a venue for his writing and other writers out there who were receiving similar rejection slips. “For me,” says Firth “it was such a logical next step as a writer to then produce a magazine — I think that spirit has been lost.”

“Maybe the Internet is simply ruining everyone’s appetite to pick up a pair of scissors and fold a piece of paper,” suggests Moore.

Or perhaps, the Internet is the future for such independents?

There are a handful of success stories in the Canadian online world, such as The Danforth Review, which Firth points out that seven or eight years ago “would have been a dynamite mid-size print magazine.”

Although it doesn’t promote itself as being “alternative” per se, The Danforth Review focusses on the Canadian small press scene “and other matters of significance.” It’s also one of the sole places on the web where you will find an up-to-date listing of functioning Canadian online magazines, such as Another Toronto Quarterly, Slingshot Magazine, and Breath.

Far more prevalent are the numbers of Canadian lit-zines that have been started and then abandoned like satellites in space. The only upside is that the interested can peruse what magazines are left, such as Barbed Wire, a Vancouver-based online magazine/experiment.

One of the more globally minded online lit-zines, which has also slipped into the ether, was Subterran. It was initially published by Ottawa writer Jeff Ross as an experiment to create a realistic and global online magazine that couldn’t be viewed in typical print format. Ross posted all letters to the editor on the site while publishing stories that slipped through the cracks of mainstream and alternative lit presses.

“There are a lot of stories out there which are not told by the popular media and appear not controversial enough for the alternative magazines,” says Ross. “These were the stories Subterran tried to publish.”

Ross now works as an editor for Pindeldyboz (“stories that defy classification”), a literary magazine run out of New York City that produces both distinct online and print versions of its magazine. The magazine’s web-based stories feature crisper prose and tend to be shorter in length.

“The best web zines have discovered how to truly turn what would be an excellent print journal into an excellent web journal,” pronounces Ross who is a fan of the web. “The web is a great tool. Any business that wishes to succeed these days needs to have some form of a web presence. Literary magazines need not be any different. If they do not publish stories, it is a necessity to showcase upcoming issues, past issues, awards won, and have subscription and submission information available.”

But this is a view that isn’t shared by those who favour paper and staples.

“The Internet is awful,” says Moore. “Liticaphobia exists in the real world, not online. The problem with the Internet is the medium, it has no tradition; it shares but it also cheats. The production is ghost-like, it’s cold and without a pulse. You need paper.”

Firth concurs: “There is just something about seeing your work in print. I think writers like to see permanence in what they do. They want their work to endure for a little while.”

It seems that other solitudes are emerging in this specialized market.

Nichole McGill is an Ottawa author whose poetry and prose has appeared in several of the print and online magazines discussed in this article.