story

Monday Night began in 2001 with an Oakland, California-based writing group that met at members’ houses (you guessed it!) every Monday night. After sharing our stories and poems with each other for several months, we decided to take a stab at self-publishing by collecting some of our work together and making a small literary journal.

The effort was a lot of work but also a lot of fun, so after the premier issue sold out in several local bookstores, in 2003 we produced Monday Night Two, which began to include the work of other artists. Issue 3 was completely devoted to featuring the work of outside writers, and since then we've grown into a full-fledged literary journal publishing the best new writing from the U.S. and around the world.

motive

When we started, none of us had published in anything larger than a college literary journal. But we wanted to get our writing out there, get the thrill of seeing our names in print and sharing our work with friends. These days, our fiction and poems have appeared in numerous regional and national publications, but Monday Night continues in order to spread the excitement of first publication to new writers.

website

Mondaynightlit.com is primarily a vehicle to promote our print journal. There are hundreds of excellent e-zines out there, but we're still partial to ink on paper. Despite the cost and extra effort, we want to keep producing a print publication that is small but beautiful, professionally designed and illustrated, yet still open to the work of new and emerging writers.

This site is currently being redesigned, but does contain a few samples of art and writing so you can see what we like to publish. Please visit the read page to find out how to obtain a copy for yourself, and the submit page to read our guidelines for submissions.

Stay tuned for the new Monday Night website, which will feature more work from past and present issues, links to our writers' websites and other excellent literary sites, as well as many other opportunities for total coolness.

Monday Night is brought to you by:

a pair of fearless editors:

Rob Pierce is an aspiring pornographer. He was told by God to be an agnostic and he writes because the voices in his head prefer to be thought of as muses.

Jessica Wickens was born and raised in a small town in northern Michigan, ran away to Chicago, and now lives in Oakland, California. She has worked in car factories, greasy restaurants, eerily quiet offices, and most recently at a lively youth services agency. Her poems have appeared in Whiskey Island Magazine, The Peralta Press, Floating Holiday, The Whirligig, and Eleven Eleven. She received her MFA in Writing at California College of the Arts. She wants to visit Antarctica.

and an ambidextrous freak:

Sharon McGill (design and illustration) received her MFA in fiction from Penn State University. Her stories and reviews have most recently been published in Opium, The Indiana Review, mcsweeneys.com, Redivider, 580 Split, while her illustrations have appeared in Zine World and countless bathroom stalls. She slaves as a designer by day, draws things inappropriate for children by night and otherwise is working on a novel.