issue no. 1: where does it start? where does it end?
andAlso Issue No. 1 asks “where does it start and where does it end for you?” It is what you want to talk about: your work, your thinking, your art. What do beginnings and endings mean to you?
We have the habit of dividing our lives into distinct zones and phases. But how closely do we represent reality when we look at the big chunk of our accumulated experiences and carve out different identities corresponding to different spaces and times? Writers like Timothy Mitchell have described how scientific ways of looking at the world encourage us to organize our lives around the idea that the “natural world” and the “human world” are two separate things. But, in reality, “we have always inhabited a mixed world, made up of imbroglios of the technical, the natural and the human.”1 We can’t actually compartmentalize the world, so why wouldn’t our lives be imbroglios, too? You’re a different person at work, but there’s only one you. And you might feel like you left your emo phase far in the past, but we all remember the outfits.
When we create or name certain boundaries, it’s less about representing reality and more about constructing narratives that help us to understand the world and to understand who we are and who we want to be. This is not to say, of course, that the narratives are purely our own creations–things really do happen in the world, and we react to them. But we are not without agency. In the post-apocalyptic world of Octavia Butler’s novel The Parable of the Sower, Lauren Olamina emphasizes that “The only lasting truth is Change. God is Change.”2 Change is not the sort of God you worship–Change isn’t listening, or even sentient. Lauren preaches a healthy respect for it, but not fear of it. We can shape change.
Every day, we shape the changes that we see and experience at scales from the individual to the global into our own narratives, which set the trajectories along which we act. We create geographies that can split selves into multiple identities or aggregate them into separate groups. We create timelines that split lives into multiple phases and split histories into various arcs.
We do this narrative creation constantly and unwittingly, and how we shape the narratives of our own lives–worker, artist, partner, parent, child–reflects and reinforces the way we shape world narratives. We have control over the boundary setting, the phase highlighting, the narrative creation–we can shape the shaping. But to do that, we have to examine processes that have become so ingrained as to feel automatic, to seem natural.
We asked “Where does it start and where does it end for you?” Another way to ask this question is, “What narratives have you constructed to make sense of the transitions or boundaries in your life?” Our hope is that reading this has made you think of something you have created or could create. We invite pieces that help you reflect on your narratives, whether this reflection happens before, during, or after their creation.
1 Mitchell, Timothy. Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil. Verso, 2011.
2 Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. New York :Four Walls Eight Windows, 1993.
submissions
We are very open-minded people. We will accept most things for submission. Here are some ideas:
- Reviews of art, books, movies, music, memes
- Interviews (of anyone/thing you want!)
- Poems
- Fiction
- Essays, whether silly, sad, polemical
- Drawings, sketches, paintings
- Photography
- Photographs of sculptures, embroidery, knitting, crafts, home renovations/decor
- Musical compositions
- Short films/movies
- Animations
- Listicles
- Acrostics
- Limericks
- Profound and/or profane text exchanges
- Memes (that you made)
- You get the idea
- A short reflection on how your piece is connected (or not) to the theme of the issue. It can be as short as two sentences, if you want. Indicate whether it would be ok for us to use any part of this reflection in the publication of your piece.
- A short bio of no more than five sentences for us to use when publishing. Include your contact info or an artist page if you like.
Lastly, we would like to make a note about “quality.” Relieve yourselves of the burden of thinking you have to submit something “good.” Submit something that you made and that you like! Whether it’s new or old or half-finished or anything! And don’t fret if you have never submitted (or even actually made) a “piece” of anything before. In fact, first-time artists are enthusiastically encouraged! The only grounds for rejection of a piece, a right which we the co-editors reserve, is if the piece feels mean-spirited or inappropriate in some way. So submit away! This is a middle-school band “everybody gets a solo” approach to literary and art magazines.
We are very excited by the prospect that some of you might potentially submit things that you made! Please reach out if you have questions (or advice).
Email submissions to
andalsomagazine@gmail.com.
All submissions are due by 11:59pm ET on April 15, 2025.
about
What does "andAlso" mean?
It seems mostly like a magazine title that makes for confusing sentences. But we have our reasons! The two of us meet over zoom regularly, ostensibly to “cowork” on creative projects, but often (usually), conversation takes over. We’re sharing about a movie or a show or a play we watched, or a book or an article we read, or something that happened in dance class. We keep meaning to ~circle back~ to the idea or task that is in theory the reason for our meeting in the first place, but each one of us, sparked by something the last one said, finds another point to add or direction to go. A phrase that comes in handy as an introduction for each new addition is “and also.”
As a free-flowing conversation happens, the jumps from one thought to the next make sense: of course the consideration of the wonders of gen z fashion sensibilities follows naturally from reminisces of the celestial imagery of late 20th century movie theater carpeting! But in an after-the-fact accounting of every topic covered, the flow is not as easy to discern. If each topic is a dot, one conversation might look like a random scattering of dots all over the map. We need "and also" to trace a path through the scatter. It is connective tissue that can turn disparate ideas into a living body. We want our conversation style to be a model for the magazine–casual and varied and enthusiastic, full of excited “and alsos” and still-developing thoughts and feelings about any and all topics, whether serious or light. We want your contributions to be in that spirit. Don’t worry about never having submitted to a literary and art magazine–50 percent of the editors have never done that either!
We would love for you to join our zoom calls to act as extra tributaries for our little stream of consciousness! But logistically, this would be difficult. So a magazine to collect your work seemed like the next best thing: a conversation collapsed in time and made physical, made up of your ideas and efforts, tied together by andAlso.
Andrew is from Yonkers, NY. He arrived in Somerville for undergrad in 2009 and has remained in the area since, much to the chagrin of his family and friends in New York. He works as a teaching professor at an engineering school and plays the saxophone. In the language of literary and art magazines, Andrew is a Cambridge-based educator and musician. He likes to spend a lot of time in coffee shops but generally limits his intake to one or two caffeinated beverages per day.
Rith was born and raised in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He crossed the Pacific Ocean to study architecture & design in Boston, where he began to ask existential questions such as how many lamps is too much lamp? Rith works as a designer across different media: digital, spatial, visual. At the moment, he studies ballet at the Alvin Ailey Extension School, where he has also performed. Rith currently resides on the island of Manhattan with seven lamps.