FEATHER & SCALE submissions due 7/31

Issue 10’s theme is Feather and Scale. The deadline is July 31. You might be thinking, “I heard it was June 14th! Do they just keep pushing it forward?” The answer is yes. We love this project and get a lot of energy from it, but the pre-issue stuff (promotion and reminding folks to submit) is something that’s not native to either of us and we’re trying to find ways to do it that feel honest and unforced. Submissions here (requires Google account) or here, as always.

Issue 9 (Ant Farm & Planetarium)

The Ant Farm & Planetarium launch (way back in May) was a lot of fun! Thanks to everyone who came out. The issue 9 puzzles are a little more competitive: solving one of them leads to an online leaderboard where people can post that they solved it. Turns out a free-to-edit Google Sheet is pretty open to corruption, but I’m pretty sure the actual winner was Thomas.

Thanks also to Mollye who opened an impromptu glitter-hair salon. If there’s a talent you ever want to share at the launch (fortune-telling? face-painting?) let us know how we can facilitate that, we tend to choose locales that are pretty amenable to Activities.

If you’re waiting on your Issue 9 in the mail, would you believe we’re a little late on those? I blame the government frankly. It’ll be there soon. Corry will autograph them.

Flash Fiction Contest

We’re partnering with Lost Squares Flash Fiction for their summer romance/weird flash fiction contest. Winners will be printed in Issue 10. Details below (and $200 prize!) if you want to participate.

Issue 10 pieces you can contribute to

If you’re interested in contributing to any of the below, feel free to submit via the regular forms above, respond to this email, Instagram DMs - whatever’s easiest.

• Advice column questions: As always, you can send your advice questions to Sky at [email protected] for her to answer in future issues.

• Stuff you heard on the radio: Issue 9 began a small ongoing feature of just stuff you discovered because the radio was on: music/musicians/categories/DJs with sultry voices. Boston has an incredible independent radio landscape and, until we got a $4 radio alarm at Goodwill, I didn’t realize how severely algorithms were narrowing my music discovery. My favorites for sheer anarchic discovery are 91.5 WMFO and 88.1 WMBR. Set a VPN to Canada on Sunday nights at 7pm EST and on Toronto’s 102.1 The Edge you can stream Alan Cross’s Ongoing History of New Music, a delightful hourlong of musical history so well-researched and compellingly scripted that I can’t believe we’re all allowed to enjoy it for free*.

• Traffic formations you go out of your way to avoid: MA’s roads are fantastically bad and for an issue 9 piece we were collecting “favorite least-favorite” intersections to categorize and draw. It didn’t end up fitting in Issue 9 so submissions are still open. The prompt specifically was What is a Boston-area intersection you can’t stand? Like, you’d add time on your route to avoid it? Do you have a particular memory of this intersection that you want to share?

• Your own stuff: If you have a piece that would benefit from crowd-sourced input, we’re always happy to shout it from our tiny rooftops here or on the Instagram.

Welp this email’s feeling long enough.

We’re really happy you made it to the end though.

*Alan Cross also posts full episodes to Spotify, but due to licensing constraints, you can only hear episodes with full-length songs on the radio - so if you miss the live broadcast, it’s gone.