essay

I bow to you, heron. I bow to stepping out of fear. I bow to patience and focus. I bow to stepping into my power. I bow to risk and…

“…submillimeter wavelengths…” -Tao Wang Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (Taiwan) “I think there is something much deeper about it, about its existence, which we have very little inkling…

WOVEN is an Entropy series and dedicated safe space for essays by persons who engage with #MeToo, sexual assault and harassment, and #DomesticViolence, as well as their intersections with mental…

The year I moved to Chicago I was cast in a play that rehearsed at the School of the Art Institute. Each day when I arrived, I would pause at…

In February 2017, I heard an advertisement for an upcoming podcast by the makers of Serial, the show that introduced me to the podcast form. For those that haven’t heard…

I’d told myself that it would be different, moving to New York. For so long, its idealized specter was my saving grace – in theory, of course – as I…

“You are about to have Oleoresin Capsicum spray applied to your face. Once that has happened, you will engage the inmate with a baton while giving verbal commands. Do not…

In 1992, a twelve year old boy rented a movie from his local Blockbuster which featured a blonde cheerleader who also happened to be a vampire slayer. I had fantastic…

The Narco-Imaginary: Essays Under the Influence by Ramsey Scott Ugly Duckling Presse, 2016 208 pages – Ugly Duckling / Amazon   Avital Ronell notes that Walter Benjamin begins his essay,…

Thoth created the world by bringing forth a dense mound of earth from the nothingness, which became the fertile land of the Nile Delta, which became the city of Khemmennu.…

Pretentiousness: Why It Matters by Dan Fox Coffee House Press, 2016 144 pages – Coffee House / Amazon   Some might take a book about pretentiousness as a bit, well, pretentious—especially if…

Guillotine is basically just me! I work with a designer, who sets up the interiors and designs the covers, and I do everything else from editing pieces to printing covers to hand-sewing 350 chapbooks at a time to stuffing envelopes. My influences are all over the place; I’m obviously influenced by a long time spent in punk and DIY and zine-making communities in terms of how I run the press and put together the chapbooks—the covers are letterpressed, the chapbooks are handbound, I don’t do (or have plans to do) ebooks.

Sad Spell Press was almost an accident. Elle and I had both considered printing chapbooks in the future but when we read a few of the submissions for Issue 1 and realized we didn’t have the space to share the work in the mag but we did still have the ability to share it, we decided to expand our plans ahead of schedule. We chose the name Sad Spell because it was already in use as the title of our blog, so that everything written that wasn’t for an issue of Witch Craft Magazine would fall under the same title. Our Spellbook Series 1 definitely does the name of our new press justice as each author picks off little pieces of your heart in turn.

I recently purchased a VCR because nostalgia has been hitting me hard lately. My fiance and I rescued one of these archaic machines from a local Goodwill and as many…