(Every month, BL will highlight a journal that doesn’t receive nearly as much recognition as it should. Our goal is to raise awareness for these publications, while building a better sense of community between editors and writers.)
A few days after Laura and I launched our site, we drove south to stop by the Richmond Zine Fest, which was held during the First Friday Art Walk in November (if you live in the area and haven’t made it to one of the First Friday events, you should. A fantastic experience. Be sure to grab a taco outside of Gallery 5). We didn’t expect to run into any fellow editors, nor were we prepared to– our goal was to buy $40 worth of photocopied zines. Up the punx.
Lo and behold, the folks at Makeout Creek had a table upstairs. I was in shock, sort of. I had stumbled onto their website a few weeks earlier, armed with a story I never submitted. I tried to tell the dude at the booth (whose name I didn’t catch) that I was aware of their publication, but I was too baffled that our paths had crossed to say anything noteworthy. Nonetheless, I happily forked over a few bucks for the most recent issue.
Makeout Creek was the first independent literary journal I ever purchased. Holding it makes my insides go gooey. I don’t think I’d feel that way if the issue wasn’t one of the best I’ve ever read.
I’m particularly impressed by the layout of Makeout Creek. There’s great variation in the artwork in #3: found objects, sketches, photography. Each image compliments the text, often in very cryptic ways. The 3-column design really illuminates the prose. I’d like to think that if every editor at The New Yorker mysteriously disappeared and were replaced by a collective of VCU art students, the resulting issues would look like Makeout Creek. The only real difference is people would actually enjoy reading it, instead of just pretending to.
It’s impossible to deny that this magazine isn’t a product of Richmond (as made evident by the ripped-up confederate currency and Michael Mehan’s “Old Virginia,” a short, but brilliant zombie screenplay).. Some of the strongest work, however, isn’t regionally-specific. Ryan P. Young’s “An Elegant Courtship”, Liz Mandrell’s “Behold, A Thousand Sticks” and Kristen Elliason’s “Yours”all left me feeling restless enough to pace around the bedroom. Smith Henderson’s “Triumphs of Natural Selection” left me feeling sympathetic towards a public figure I couldn’t stand, while simultaneously highlighting the irony of he death. Mike Powell even reviews the classic film Snow Dogs in ”It’s Not Your Fault, Cuba Gooding Jr.”
(As a white kid from New York City whose seen Boyz N The Hood enough times to recite it verbatim, I think it’s important for me to say this. No one can really claim they foresee these sorts of roles from Cuba. Think about some of the things tre does after he moves in with Furious: he works at a high-end fashion store in the mall, he lies about baggin’ women, he restores a glorified VW bug, asks Doughboy to let him out the car, and cries after being accosted but subsequently released by a corrupt police officer. My point? Even in his hardest role, Cuba was a mark-ass buster.)
Our point: we’ve buried our heart at Makeout Creek. You probably should, too.
