LE MAGPIE
MISSION
Magpie Zine was born from an affinity for early underground zines—subversive, intelligent, uniquely collaborative, and vigorously imaginative. We are devoted to the spirit of that counterculture and the heart and soul of originality. We support writers and artists whose aesthetic is an experience. We go bananas for the story that has to be told, the story that will only appear once in the world, singular in voice, tone, and approach. Each magazine issue is a themed collection of somewhat unusual, possibly urgent, and slightly unhinged human expressions, existing somewhere between fancy and feral or a rock and a highbrow.
We offer four online issues a year. (We’d love to publish a print version like a proper zine, but while we’d wear our staple wounds and papercuts with pride like we were 16 again, creating multiple copies for all you fine people would take for-ev-errr. Plus, trees. Must hug the trees.)
Magpie is a publication of The Howler Project, a nonprofit human arts collective creating space for connection and expression. We used to publish work under The Howler Daily, but then we took a year off, grew our nonprofit, had our midlife crises, and evolved into Magpie Zine. Check out The Howler Daily archives here
We’re a volunteer, motley troupe of discerning discontents, mostly habitating in the Midwest. Our day jobs differ, but we all gave our hearts to the arts a long time ago. We seek the fresh and the real for an equally real-fresh collection published with the seasons. Give us your prose, poetry, art, humor, and the wildly unclassifiable. More on the Submit page
Need to talk to a human? Contact us here
LE MAGPIE
DIS-CONTENTS
MICHELLE QUICK :: Editor
MICHELLE is the architect of The Howler Project nonprofit, from whence Magpie emerged. She has led a kaleidoscope life, from a classically trained chef to an outdoor guide. Michelle earned an MFA from the University of Nebraska Omaha, where she is currently an instructor, advisor, and graduate student (again) in clinical social work and anthropology. Michelle's training is in expressive arts therapy, and her research explores the varying cosmologies of creativity.
Her writing appears in a variety of places. Her prose and poetry have been nominated for Best of the Net and awarded an Academy of American Poets prize. She has designed and photographed for established magazines and organizations like Wine Enthusiast, Midwest Living, Orion Magazine, and Convoy of Hope, and she is the Art Editor for Mud Season Review.
Michelle is a sucker for found objects, riot grrrl bands, and fresh air. She is so looking forward to seeing your creations.
RACHEL BASH :: Prose
RACHEL is a recovering academic and writer wending her way (often on foot) across the streets, paths, and trails of the Omaha area. She has written a dissertation, the best part of which was the writing itself along with those little moments in the margins of the novels where magic happened.
She currently collaborates with students in writing, literature, and life design classrooms, and she has supported students in retention-based programs at two different universities.
She writes about family, travel, and the seeking of small delights. She has a passion for storytelling and agrees with Patti Smith that a good coffee shop is a "portal to where."
HOTSPUR CLOSSER :: Prose + Humor
HOTSPUR walks a fine line between earnestness and resignation in the foothills of Fayetteville, Arkansas. Born to a pair of English professors, he carved out a career as a public librarian in order to avoid academia and somehow wound up perfunctorily teaching creative writing anyway. He believes in art, poetry, the Golden Rule, and the Oxford comma. A misanthropic aesthete at heart, he’s a sensitive man who’s not afraid to throw hands over inconsequential matters. He has experienced the whole and genuine meanness of life and is convinced the best writing is that which most accurately addresses the human condition. Sometimes, he wishes he were a cowboy. Most of the time, he wishes he were somewhere else. His superpowers include boundless trivial knowledge and the uncanny propensity to disappoint. When he’s not writing, he’s doing his best to retain his sense of humor while kicking against the pricks. He still hasn’t set the clock on his microwave.
REBECCA ROTERT :: Poetry
REBECCA received her MA from Hollins College in Virginia where she was the recipient of the Academy of American Poets prize. Her work has appeared in Santa Clara Review, America magazine, and The New York Times, among others. The essay, Proteus on the Vasa was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her novel, Last Night at the Blue Angel, received the Friends of American Writers Award, the Nebraska Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Dublin International Literary Award. A collection of poems, All the Animals We Ever Were, was published in November 2017. Understory, a book-length poem, was published in 2020. Rotert lives in Omaha, NE.
SHYLA SHEHAN :: Poetry
SHYLA is an analytical Virgo from Iowa who rewrites her bio every week. From the smorgasbord of life, she selected motherhood (of humans and cats), bike riding, woolgathering, and writing. Though she often feels that writing chose her. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Pinch, New York Quarterly, Moon City Review, Drunk Monkeys, and elsewhere, and she has flash essays in Nelle and Write or Die Magazine.
This week, she is splitting her time between managing a healthy household, curating a nonprofit journal, The Good Life Review, and planning her escape. She would also love to read some poems that will surprise her or make her laugh-cry and hopes you will send some her way.
JACK PHILLIPS :: Poetry
After a teaching and academic career that took him from Alaska’s Tongass Rainforest to the Levant and North Africa and many points between, JACK embraced the poetics of North American ecosystems. He is a poet, naturalist, nature writer and founder of The Naturalist School, and he teaches eco-spirituality at Creighton University School of Medicine, where he also leads retreats for students and faculty.
Jack seeks advice from cottonwood murmurs and grandmother oaks, sonic frogs and bluebird sutras, dragonfly rattles and the cosmogonic cracking of pond ice, and helps other seekers do the same. Wild nature – the heart of every living thing – sprouts and grows creativity; every generative act, when born of the wildest self, offers our hands and voice, body-souls, and feral imaginations to the fertile pulse of the cosmos, and hers to ours. Healing and compassion are rooted here.
In wider circles, he is the author of a few books and has published a bunch of poems, is a Pushcart nominee, and was the keynote speaker and featured poet for the 56th annual Neihardt Day at the John G. Neihardt Center. However, the potency of a poem is found in the act of composing; many of his poems are returned to the earth or mixed with pond water or given to the campfire.
CAMILA QUINTERO :: Art
CAMILA is a multidisciplinary artist and architectural engineer, splitting her time between the Midwest's urban center of Chicago and her birthplace in the Peruvian Andes, where she enjoys minimal cell service. A graduate of the University of Illinois-Chicago, she has worked nationally and internationally in places like San Francisco and Buenos Aires. As an engineer, she became fascinated by spaces and the hows and whys of our persistent need to fill them and with what we choose to fill them. This curiosity led her to art and art making, which felt like a natural way to investigate such intricacies.
She constructed her first diorama at the age of thirty from items she found discarded in Chicago transit systems. She has since expanded her exploration into other mediums like sculpture, installations, and performance art. Her work has been exhibited and performed in various North and South American cities.