We Still Like

We're upgrading!

2011-05-22T01:46:00.000-07:00

Check out our new digs and soon-to-be full-featured blog here:

http://www.westilllike.com/blog/

You're about to be redirected, but don't forget to please update your bookmarks and feed readers. More WSL to come!

Call for Submissions

2010-10-25T17:07:00.000-07:00

To Whom It May Inspire:

It’s that time again. Our intrepid literary zine is now accepting submissions! I know, right? Issue 3, already! Can you believe it? Are you wondering how we do it? (Cue vigorous nodding.)

Honestly, sometimes, we almost don’t. Sometimes, say, after a grueling year of editing your favorite new publication, sometimes we consider throwing in the towel, we consider careers as astronauts or venture capitalists or trophy wives. Sometimes we wonder how anything ever becomes anything at all.

And then we remember: Anything that is anything now was nothing before it was something. And between that nothing and something was an idea that could have been abandoned somewhere in the forest of almost. How many ideas have we forgotten because we didn’t write them down, or because we wrote them off when they sounded hard? How many magazines don’t exist for every one page we manage to manifest? That forest of almost is easy to miss, what with all those trees in the way.

Too often we forget how much of anything is simply an accumulation, of trees, of words, of time, just putting one foot in front of the other while we’re lost in the forest, before we can see what — if anything — is ahead. In order to do something, anything, we decide to stop being afraid of that dark mystery almost, our fear of what it will or won’t be, and instead just to do it anyway. We quit acting like our lives won’t start until certain impossible criteria are met. We do it now. We venture into almost and see what happens.

So, in the spirit of things we almost didn’t do — like start this magazine, but aren’t we glad we did! — we are excited to announce the theme of our third issue, you guessed it: We Still Like Almost.

In the Almost issue, we’ll be raising our glass and putting down ink in honor of all that is almost finished, almost perfect, almost famous, almost here, almost gone, almost over. Here’s to what’s on the brink, what’s still a sliver of possibility, what’s potential energy on the cusp of becoming kinetic. We’re collecting the ephemeral and the phantom, all that very nearly was or is about to be, any Nice Trys or Pipe Dreams you’ve got lying around. We want to talk about approximations, about the spaces in between in-betweens (call them liminal if you’re in grad school). Let’s defy definition, defy inner critics, defy genre. Send us poetry, fiction, foetry, lyric essays, factual fairy tales, love notes folded into fortune cookies, the cover letter you wrote for the job you didn’t want anyway. We want your unchecked to-do lists, your receded hairline, your fumbled pass. Send us pieces written by your imaginary friends, drawings of the ideas you had but then forgot, uninventions, photographs of ghosts, your collection of error messages and returned diamond rings. Send us anything ALMOST.

You have almost (that is to say slightly-more-than) one month: The deadline is February 14. If your work almost fits the theme, or doesn’t fit at all, that’s fine too, send it anyway. And, if you almost miss the deadline... well, you get the idea.

We’ve got a fancy new submission form where you can upload your anything-almost here: http://westilllike.submishmash.com/

Sure, it’s the Shoulda-Coulda-Woulda issue. But we won’t take any excuses.

We’re Almost There!

Love,
We Still Like

Read We Still Like Gravity ONLINE!

2010-10-20T17:33:00.000-07:00

Our brand new digital version is here! It reads just like the real thing. But it doesn't give you that sweet sensation of screw post metal and screenprinted cardboard against skin — so, if you like what you see, snag a real live copy you can snuggle up to at night.

Preview the issue

2010 Subscription Drive Success

2010-10-20T14:01:00.000-07:00

We'd like to give a well-deserved shout-out to our IndieGoGo contributors for helping us get the future of We Still Like underway:

Thomas Andes
Bradford Earle & Tupelo Hassman
Rose Haynes & Andy Touhy
Edan Lepucki
Jeff Miller
Jason Perez
Sonya Thompson
Jennifer Williams & Nick McClintock
Lisa Wisniewski

We love you! Seriously, like a lot a lot.

Stay tuned for the big reveal: Issue Three will open for submissions November 1.

Oh yeah and in the meantime, here's a slideshow from our backyard release party. Remember June?

We Still Like ICAT

2010-09-27T19:04:00.000-07:00

You'll be seeing our smiling faces this Friday down at Oakland's Art Murmur art walk as part of the fantastic Invisible City Audio Tours happening from 5-8pm.

Join us and let 12 authors—including several featured in the pages of We Still Like—guide you around Oakland with their voices and stories. Click over to Invisible City Audio Tours for more info (plus read our write-up of the first happening, here).

And while you're there you can pick up a copy of WSL:Gravity if you haven't yet. We're planning a special free-with-purchase surprise for you all, as part of our subscription drive at IndieGoGo. Did we mention our subscription drive at IndieGoGo? Go-go on over and send us some love. There's only a few days left to help make sure WSL can keep bringing you likeable likery from here on out.

Invisible Authors Like Hearing Ourselves Talk

2010-09-27T18:54:00.000-07:00

Notes on an Anonymous Reading

Sarah Ciston

Recently I found myself standing among a group of strangers on a street corner in Oakland, all of us with earbud headphones in. It could have been any other afternoon near a stoplight, but today at this stoplight we were all listening to the same thing: my words, spoken in my voice. Not unlike at any other reading of my work, I was a little shaky and could barely make eye contact. This time, however, I wasn’t actually speaking.

It was the first of many Invisible City Audio Tours, a nonprofit specializing in surreal tourism—exploring unexplored neighborhoods through the work of authors, composers, and artists instead of guidebooks. The first tour, Heliography, commissioned work from 12 writers, each of us assigned an address along the stretch of Telegraph Avenue between MacArthur BART and the Uptown gallery district of Oakland.

Invisible City’s founder, Tavia Stewart-Streit, encouraged us to visit each spot and stay awhile, finding new ways to notice these atypical points of interest—a freeway underpass, a mortuary, a wig store. Once our short fictions were complete, she sent us to the recording studio, where into the microphone our stories went.

As far as I understand it, the rest of her process involved incredible feats of strength, a rallying of the populace, many sleepless nights, and a donated fleet of GM automobiles. Artists were commissioned to create “souvenirs” to sell at each landmark. Composer Jesse Solomon Clark created a musical landscape to bridge the spaces between stories and stops. Audio was mixed and podcastified. Maps were printed. Then, along with more than 100 other tourists, we took to the streets.

That’s how I found myself attending my own reading for the very first time. There, in front of the wig store, listeners were pooling around a table full of lovely illustrated zines about the history of hairstyles. Some of them were looking through the zines, some were looking at each other, some were looking at me, and then right past me as if I were just another listener. And I almost was.

It occurred to me (only then, in that overwhelming moment) how unusual an opportunity this was, the one I was right then squelching by avoiding eye contact as if suddenly they all knew a secret about me. When else is a writer able to examine the faces of her “readers” so closely (or to see she has readers at all), able to catch microexpression flashes of understanding or enjoyment or revulsion or worse? Short of such writerly acts of subtlety as donning sunglasses and a hat at an event, or sneaking up behind someone after “accidentally” leaving out a copy of one’s book—probably never. Certainly, we will never get to read our own work and understand it the way anyone else does. The chance to hear it as someone else does is almost as impossible. To roam freely through the landscape of listeners, wordless but knowing you are heard—what a strange, trembling miracle.

As miracles go, I was seriously failing to appreciate this one, thanks to the terror of witnessing people’s reactions and the extra terror of realizing I had zero control over what those reactions were. Of course, we never do. Text and meaning-making have always been the province of the reader, though a writer’s sense of ownership often outlasts its expiration date. But this time, without the prop of a podium or the chance for revision on the fly, I didn’t have even the illusion that I was involved in the act of experiencing my work. Once my words went down the rabbit hole of that microphone, I was finished.

Finished is that rare feeling that comes along once every other blue moon or so and feels remarkably like a stomach ache. It seems like it should be a triumphant HaHaTakeThat! Instead, all I felt was humbled, this self becoming smaller and my tiny story growing larger, snaking out of the layer of ego that must be shed (new ego skin still raw underneath) once a work becomes itself in the world.

Finished, as it turns out, means standing naked in the street and not pretending you’re an emperor or that anyone will notice or care. (This is the Bay Area after all, where nudists and writers alike come a dime a dozen.) And there I stood—all at once exposed and insignificant, an author completely displaced—so that I could be moved, if you will, by words that had been mine before they found their place.

It sounds debilitating, but I assure you it’s also warm and inspiring. We should be so lucky to feel that way more often: writers working independently but as part of something larger than our own neurotic brains, something strangers are as excited by as we are—when usually we’re each holed up in a closet-office somewhere, revisions blurring, pages spewing straight out of the printer and into the drawer, years on end, on end, amen. Finishing feels like being among the living again.

That night a few writers got to feel like real live people, or like visual artists with the gift of a tangible space to correspond with their words, a distance from which to appreciate them. Like at the end of a sitcom, we all learned something about ourselves: that many of us wrote about refracting light, that many of us recorded barefoot, that our words could hang on the air before us and be untethered from us and be free. It was a wonderful kind of strange I hope everyone gets to feel.

You can take the tour anytime (or any place), but for the full effect check out the next Invisible City happening Friday, Oct. 1, in Oakland—ride BART to the MacArthur station, then make your way past 12 surreal stops before you arrive in the epicenter of Art Murmur, the city’s monthly art walk. Make sure to begin the tour before 7 p.m. to catch all the souvenirs (like oasis sand globes, miniature dioramas, and beer koozies) and surprises along the way.

Download the stories for free (at www.invisiblecityaudiotours.org), throw them on your iDevice, and swing by on Oct. 1. If you see me there, I hope you say hello. I’ll be the one at the wig store with my headphones in, giving you a funny look.

We Still Like the End of the World

2010-09-13T17:28:00.000-07:00

Another scene from the latest We Still Like release party, wherein we act out an indie apocalyptic kitch love story:

Yes, our acting troupe is available for your party or event. Will work for literature.

We also work for tips! Make sure to check out our subscription drive over at IndieGoGo. Clean out the cup holders in your car, hand us your change and help us make more of what we know you still like!

We Still Like On Camera

2010-09-13T17:00:00.000-07:00

A scene from the latest We Still Like release party, wherein we compliment our critical mass of party guests and raise a toast to saving literature, then take postmodernism viral with the first live-tweet of a poetry reading.

Stay tuned for more video and audio from our WSL:Gravity issue party, plus other things We Still Like.

Meanwhile, make sure to check out our subscription drive over at IndieGoGo. Shake out those couch cushions, hand us your change and help us make more of what we know you still like!

Shark Attack!

2010-09-12T14:05:00.000-07:00

We definitely still like whale sharks — because they are the world's largest fish, but also because it turns out they are fuzzy. We like them so much we drove down to Baja to swim with them. What did YOU do on your summer vacation?

Now that we're back from the wilderness, expect WSL to take over the Internets any day now. Check us out on the Tweet Machine, MyFace and right here for updates to come.

@WeStillLike: The Twitter Files

2010-06-25T15:15:00.000-07:00

Here are the front-line dispatches from the WSL:Gravity release party's Embedded Twitter Correspondent, @KateRegan, who Live Tweeted (??) the entire event! Highlights of the #WeStillLike tag include the apocalypse, prat falls, shit-kicker boots and some random teenager talking about Justin Bieber. Obviously, the event was a resounding success!

Editor Chris is the headliner this evening. He just started unbuttoning his collar! #WeStillLike being racy! What kind of party is this?

September 3 is the debut of Invisible Cities walking art/fiction tour. It's going to be amazing! #WeStillLike everything about that.

What's more popular than the readings? Nothing. But the color coordinated bookshelf comes close. #WeStillLike http://twitpic.com/1zq51v

Josh is reading. His GF suggested he be more dynamic- so he submitted to Gravity. #WeStillLike Josh. We would even if he didn't submit. Heh

Tupelo is up. I'd tweet about what she's reading, but I'm really taken with her coat. #WeStillLike fashion. But only said like David Bowie.

The only answer is the striving for it. #WeStillLike

Sarah is next. She's reading a piece about reading Infinite Jest. #WeStillLike being here forever or however long it took u to read it.

Open mic has commenced. #WeStillLike spontaneous poetry.

"it might not be the apocalypse you thought, but it's the apocalypse you got." word. #WeStillLike real talk.

"the universe is a stage on where you dance, guided by your heart." is this guy for real?#WeStillLike

People popping up in the crowd to yard-read Tavia and Sarah's script. Oh shit! #WeStillLike it when Brad takes a prat fall.

I'm making everyone wait for me to read a tweet or two while I tweet. #WeStillLike being meta-ridiculous. Metadiculous?

The wind is eery. Creepy reading party? Jk jk. #WeStillLike motha nature-made drama.

Art has to be made. Even in yr shit kicker boots. - Monica Regan #WeStillLike

Gravity is weak bc it's leaking into paralell universes. #WeStillLike String Theory. Yeah!

Monica Regan is about to read. #WeStillLike Regans! Even if they are not related!

Oh gosh. We're starting. The last time I stood up in front of this many people, I was talking about e-commerce.

A cardigan will ruin this outfit. #WeStillLike drinking for warmth.

The weather might be a bummer but uh, we're on it. #WeStillLike the donation table. http://twitpic.com/1zp5fb

Poppin bottles. Almost knocked the neighbor's window out with the cork. Oops! Sorry guy. #WeStillLike you.

WeStillLike to party all the time, party all the time, party all the tiiiimmmme. http://twitpic.com/1zp45x

Wearing stilettos to a back yard garden party because #WeStillLike a challenge.

Going to be reading tweets at the @WeStillLike party tonight. I guess I'll finally know what it's like to do bad stand up.

SF! Come to this tomorrow night: http://bit.ly/ca8JKo It's all about Gravity so I'm pretty sure someone will fall down. Probably me.

@wita_fajar #WeStillLike him.. :D RT @aisputri: @wita_fajar RT @utayutay: #didyouknow that @TimMarbun has Justin Bieber's O (cont) http://tl.gd/22fq1j

Huh? That last one makes no sense! But we still like it.

Many thanks to everyone who joined us for a rad and raucous event. You can keep following us on the Tweet Machine at @WeStillLike.

And special thanks again to @KateRegan for all her journalistic prowess.

We Still Like Gravity: A Reading Under the Stars

2010-06-14T14:11:00.003-07:00

In case you were having doubts, yes, we still like you, we've just been busy creating the next issue of We Still Like, our humble but mighty literary zine. And now we want you to have it!

WSL: Gravity lands on Thursday, June 24, and the geeks at NASA estimate it will arrive at 4232 Terrace Street, Oakland, at 7 pm. Bring your picnic blankets and those funky cereal box contraptions we used to watch eclipses as kids. Just kidding, don't bring those or everyone will laugh at you. But do bring blankets and beer for a backyard reading beneath the stars. Brilliant!

The Big Dipper's got nothing on our four featured readers, whom we've wrangled from the four corners of the earth (i.e. between the Haight and Oakland) for your entertainment and delight. They include local literary superstars Anhvu Buchanan, Monica Regan, Tavia Stewart-Streit and Andrew R. Touhy.

And there's more! Not only will our readers entertain you, but you're also invited to entertain yourselves by bringing a story, poem, rant, rave, train schedule or training manual to perform for the assembled multitudes. You'll be famous!

A suggested donation of about 10 bucks gets you in the door with a limited edition, hand-numbered copy of WSL: Gravity. Plus we're now offering We Still Like subscriptions to feed your need for local literary tomfoolery in perpetuity (more details to follow). All proceeds fuel the continued existence and expansion of the We Still Like enterprise. Soon you'll be able to see us from space!

But since we can't see you through the Internets (or can we...) please RSVP ASAP. TTYL from WSL.

WSL:Gravity, a reading under the stars

HMS Readership, 4232 Terrace St, Oakland

Thursday, June 24, 7-11PM

Small Presses Take Over the World!

2010-03-01T13:31:00.000-08:00

...the tiny world of niche literature, but still! We're beyond excited about this feature by L. J. Moore:

Sarah Ciston and Chris Pedler still like a lot of things, including books. Real books: the tactile, paper-based, lend-able kind that work without batteries. The kind that come in only a few copies which get passed around, picking up coffee rings, dog-ears, marginalia and pastry crumbs, and that function less like a shout into the general ethers and more like putting one’s ear to the ground. It was out of this desire to make something physical, sincere, and communal out of the act of reading that We Still Like Books was formed. We Still Like is not really “a zine, and not really a journal,” Ciston says, because “our attitude is to be inclusive rather than exclusive, but at the same time we’re not man-on-the-street photocopying zines in the back office. We’re not highbrow and not lowbrow.” “We’re better than Burger King,” Pedler clarifies, “but not as good as Magnolia.” “Yes,” Ciston agrees, “We’re the California Cuisine of fast food.”

Read the rest of the SF Examiner Feature

Submit to Gravity! (ideally without falling over)

2009-12-17T16:48:00.000-08:00

THWOMP!

That was the sound of our motivation hitting rock bottom as we go into hibernation mode for the winter. We could blame the freakishly-un-Californian cold weather or the semester petering out, but Gravity, we're looking at you. We had such high hopes for you, and there you go again, bringing us down. Thanks Gravity, thanks a lot.

But let's not be too hard on the ole chap. Gravity will bring us back around, just like it does planets! Even if you haven't started on your project, or it doesn't have quite the... gravitas... you were hoping for, take heart. If you haven't sent us anything yet, you still have time to get your act together. And if you are submitting something and it's just, oh let me see, "taking a little longer than expected" — feel free to let us know what you'll be sending our way and when. We accept imaginary submissions and the idea of ideas. Oddly enough, telling us you're going to do it is the biggest step toward Actually Doing It. The rest is just execution. And yes, sometimes progress feels a bit like execution by slow, dull guillotine or an industrial revolution-era sweatshop, but more often than not we look back on the experience and think, "That was easy." Or maybe that was just the Staples commercial on in the background.

But I digress... In the spirit of those holiday spirits looming over your shoulder or in your flask, I'll get to the point. Here's what we want for Christmas [insert celebration of your choice]:

Something you've written, drawn, built, captured, or otherwise come to possess using those wily creative faculties of yours. And by creative faculty we don't mean creative writing faculty members (acquired willingly or otherwise). Those are about the only submission we won't accept. We just don't have the budget for that.

We still love photography, found art, cocktail napkins, still life, still like, and anything that can be pinned to paper or put online (or emailed to WeStillLike@gmail.com).

We still love January, which is when we'll be compiling everything you sent us by December 31. I mean, ahem, Decembruary Eleventeenth Grumble Hangover Grumble. It will probably take us a few days of recovery from the holidays to open our email and face the world again, so you can consider that your unofficial extension.

But time's awastin', kiddos, so help make gravity heavy by getting your submissions to us as soon as the laws of physics allow. Gravity will not be stopped!

And if you haven't gotten your hands on a copy of Issue 1, Manifesto Destiny is now featured in stores in the Bay Area (Needles and Pins and Dog-Eared Books in SF, and Issues in Oakland). Plus, you can still get a copy directly from us, but we're down to a mere handful, so hurry fast!

May your holidays be full of gravy, and gravity too,
Sarah & Chris

Call for Submissions! We Still Like GRAVITY

2009-10-27T00:20:00.000-07:00

Are you, like us, suffering from post–We Still Like Issue 1 symptoms of withdrawal? Do you feel irrevocably drawn to the next issue? Submit! We insist! That funny feeling in your tummy is not just a hangover — it’s the inescapable gravitation of a compelling work of future literary astonishment; it’s the weight of your brilliant ideas. Just as all matter wants to get back together — like a bad reunion tour or a reenactment of the Big Bang — we want you to crash into us (Dave Matthews, ironically, being the one exception to this rule). Consider We Still Like the black hole into which all your good ideas will fall. And now that we’ve sucked you in...

Let’s talk about gravity.

Don’t think about all that stuff weighing on you. Don’t think about work. Don’t think about school. Don’t think about love. Don’t think about why you’re here or how you feel about that. Don’t think about anything at all. There. Feel it? That’s the breeze. That’s the end of summer. That’s the earth turning the day into night. That’s the planet swinging like a tether ball around the sun. That’s the balance between stillness and motion. That’s gravity.

Gravity is also all of those other things — work, school, love, mountains, phases of the moon. Gravity is everything everywhere, all that we don’t or can’t think of. Don’t think of it! But don’t fight it. It’s what keeps you in your chair, what anchors you, what is constant. Whew, it’s heavy! It’s what attracts you to the people and other planetary masses that swirl around you. It’s what you orbit. It’s all those unseen natural forces that you’ve been taking for granted.

Let’s talk about dark matter and the way pencils roll off tables and onto floors; let’s talk of apples falling from trees, astronauts peeing into tubes, the myths of Newton and Sisyphus, the momentum of falling, levitation and suspension of disbelief — let’s talk of all that we revolve around, spinning orbits through Oakland, Allenstown, Silverlake, Park Slope, home.

You can write about any or all or none of these things for We Still Like Gravity. As always, the requirements are slight but important: We don’t care if it’s poetry or prose, rants or raves, photographs or ephemera, criticism or catharsis. Make something true. And don’t fuss over it too hard. Email your submissions to WeStillLike@gmail.com. And, so that we can figure out just how much this next issue will weigh, go ahead and write to let us know if you are planning to send work our way. We hope to hear from you!

Here’s to Gravity — all that is heavy and beautiful, all that is meaningful, all that pulls us together,
Sarah & Chris

We Still Like Reading

2009-10-16T15:19:00.000-07:00

Thanks guys!

Our launch was fantastic, thanks to our lovely audience and readers who rocked so hard.

Have a look at the photos from the big night!

Holy smokes, the new issue looks rad!

2009-10-05T23:40:00.000-07:00

We are currently buried under 100 unassembled copies of the first issue of We Still Like: Manifesto Destiny. We can't believe how good it looks. No, seriously. We can't believe it. And you won't believe it either — until you see it Wednesday, 7 p.m., at Space Gallery. Be there!

Sneak Preview of Issue 1, Now with More Local Color and Extra Pataphysics!

2009-10-05T01:25:00.000-07:00

Appetites were whetted with talk of what was possible. What we couldn't soak up with a napkin we put into a magazine. Wring out and drink up! We'll see you at the party.

Manifesto Toward the Impossible
[Sarah Ciston]

Why make manifestos? Why is it so important to declare, to reinvent?

In this brave new era of breakdown, we see opportunity! We have a chance to shed the status quo for everything we’ve always wanted. Why not? Even our most tempered, realistic expectations didn’t work out quite the way we were told they should, so we refuse to temper our expectations any longer.

We want. We want everything — fully, openly, more.

Why want this?

Because there is nothing else.
Because everything will quickly fade.
Because both the pain and the bliss of life will pass from us too soon.
Because it is no longer worth being patient against what you deserve.

We will ask for and expect nothing less from the world. We will no longer listen to naysayers who speak of the impossible like it can’t be done, like it does not exist as much or even more than anything else.

San Francisco’s Been Chucking Rocks at Me from the Other Side of the Moon
[Zulema Summerfield]

San Francisco’s been chucking rocks at me from the other side of the moon. This is real conflict. It’s like having animals descend upon you, alighting on your outstretched arms, your face turned up to the sky… but then they turn on you and tear apart your face, shoot venom into your mouth and claw out your eyes.

San Francisco’s chucking rocks at me, also shooting guns into the air outside my window, stealing my mail, posting shit about me on MySpace. The internet breeds conflict between San Francisco and me. A trolley car rolls over the vulnerable side of my heart (the tender side, the side that lives in fear, the side that’s already swollen and bruised), and the city just stands there, points and laughs and stares. I think, Maybe it will be better if I move? But prices are too high, and really, there’s nowhere else to go.

So I escape into the forest for a few days, survive on foraged mushrooms and squirrels I hunt myself with a slingshot my brother gave me. A couple of hours later, a ranger shows up. He’s got a telephone whose cord stretches all the way across the forest, to the far horizon where his cabin is. I can see the lights blinking there.

The ranger shakes his head, clucks his tongue. “Them mushrooms’ll kill ya.” He hands me the phone. “Sfer you.” He’s the kind of man I’d have loved in another life — moustache, doesn’t talk much, hides things under the bed. But then he walks away.

“Hello?”

The city is buzzing on the other end of the line.

“You can run but you can’t hide…” I think I can hear the sound of knuckles grinding, or at the very least being popped.

Birds are out here somewhere. They’re just shadows in these shadowed trees. Those birds?

There’s no getting away from those birds. They’re all just waiting for their chance.

But god! My eyes are so tired. Vigilance is costly. Vigilance is a million dollars on which I haven’t got a hold.

We Still Like Contributors!

2009-10-04T17:06:00.000-07:00

Our brave artist-types don't get enough credit slaving away in their offices/closets/caves of creativity, sending out semaphore signals and waving down passing cars by the side of the freeway. We will wave for them, until our arms get tired and fall off, because we still like everyone on this list:

Gina Caciolo is 22 and in the process of finishing six dreaded MFA applications. Sometimes she's Cacia Y. Pepe, who wrote for Stranded In Stereo, mainly reviewing reality television shows. Otherwise, her work has been featured in Mirage#4/Period(ical), Fast Forward, Volume 2, and Ophelia Street; and she was the editor of Dinner is Foreplay for City Folk, a now defunct online review mag. In her spare time, she's a waitress at a crappy restaurant, stares at the sky for long periods of time and writes songs with her boyfriend for his band Pleasant Corners.

Sarah Ciston likes scuba diving, even though she gets seasick, and geography, even though the world is a really big place. Her forthcoming novel is called Fuck Everyone But Us, but don't worry, she doesn't mean you.

Poet Rick D'Elia should not be confused with the comedian of the same name, nor his father who had the name first. He is originally from Massachusetts, just like both his father and the comedian, but currently resides in San Francisco, far from those other Rick D'Elia's. Now, he is strangely being confused with his doppleganger and believes any confrontation may cause "a disaster of biblical proportions. Like Old Testament, real wrath of God type stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies, rivers and seas boiling, forty years of darkness, the dead rising from the grave, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!" or maybe not.

Bradford Earle is a newly minted [adjective] person. He was previously an idea on the East Coast in the wasteland commonly known as [proper noun]. He spends most of his time composing mediocre [noun] and painting marginal works of [noun] in a valiant (albeit ineffective) attempt to impress the woman he [verb]s. His history is a [noun], as ideas are [adverb] difficult to examine. In his new [adjective] form he is likely to be found [verb]ing small bears or imitating [noun] in his free time.

Jacob I. Evans currently lives in Vietnam where he teaches English and eats street food, which is not the same thing as eating food off of the street. A recent email collaboration and exchange with Matt L. Rohrer, the middle initial is important, can be found at Digital Artifact.
Kathleen Nye Flynn works for the Huntington Post and lives in Los Angeles, California.

Like a chess prodigy or a member of New Edition, Tupelo Hassman has never quite recovered from having a bridge graffiti'd in her honor at seventeen. Her attempts to supplant the memory of "I (heart) Tupelo" six-feet-tall in white housepaint over Highway 17 have been published in a few literary magazines and continue in her current project: Uh-uh-uh—uh-uh-uh-uh-uh: The Anatomy of Mickey Spillane. They just don't write 'em like that anymore. Her first novel, girlchild, will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux before the end of the Mayan calendar. You've been warned.

When Dustin Heron grows up, he will be dangerously unqualified for his job. Scrubbing toilets. No disgrace in that, not for Dustin Heron. But he can't move his arm clockwise, and he doesn't like to go counter to anything. He likes to go with the herd. Staring down into the blue bubbly toilet bowls of his future, he will have no choice but to go down. His work has appeared in Ashcan, Watchword, The Sand Canyon Review and Transfer. His first book, Paradise Stories, is available from Small Desk Press.

Jedediah Johnson is a photographer/singer/songwriter/author who lives and works in basements in or around Altadena, California. Most of his free time these days is spent trying to figure out how to tell that one special lady that he has always loved her and doing a little amateur astronomy. He comes from Indianapolis, one of the top five most romantic cities in the great state of Indiana.

Chris Pedler likes to drink beer and make fun of the Oakland Raiders. He writes poetry about lingerie models, grizzly bears and California. He also helps edit the literary magazine We Still Like, which is better than all other literary magazines, though he realizes that's not saying much. He also finds it awkward to refer to himself in the third-person.

Tye Pemberton graduated from USC with a BA in English-Creative Writing. He is now a fiction candidate in the Master's Program for Writing at Columbia University. His short work has appeared in Versal, Watchword, and on TheRumpus.net. Please, West Coast, let him come home.

Annie Pentilla is an editor at the new chapbook press Highway 101.

Tavia Stewart has volunteered at 826 Valencia's creative writing center, interned for McSweeney's Publishing and ZYZZYVA, and currently runs National Novel Writing Month's Young Writers Program. She's been published in Smokelong Quarterly and curates Whole Story, a new performance model that transforms a conjunctive gallery and theater space into a life-sized, multimedia diorama in reaction to one short story.

Vinh Truong was raised by wolves. He doesn't like talking about himself.

Zulema Summerfield is a writer living and working in San Francisco. She is originally from a little place called Redlands, California. She's been published here and there.

Join us!

2009-10-01T01:20:00.000-07:00

We Still Like: The Magazine Launch Party
Because we still like an excuse to celebrate!

Wednesday, October 14
7 p.m.
Space Gallery
1141 Polk St, SF

Attention Disaffected Hipsters, Art-School-Types and Everyone Else: Your new favorite publication has arrived! Obviously this calls for a party!

Decidedly not another snooty literary magazine, We Still Like is a collaboration-in-print operating on the simple-but-radical premise that we won't wait for permission from cultural gatekeepers to put what we create into the world, that writing should not be used as an empty signifier to establish elitist cred and that art can engage real people and real ideas about our real lives (Really!). Despite the cynicism born from headlines and hipsterdom, we still like sincerity. Despite the digital deluge, we still like books — so we've solicited the work of 15 talented writers and artists just like yourself to create the first issue of We Still Like, a manifesto-themed collection of prose, poetry, reviews, rants and raves.

We Still Like: Manifesto Destiny makes its debut with a party and reading at Space Gallery on Wednesday, October 14.

Literary superheros Vinh Truong, Zulema Summerfield, Chris Pedler, Tupelo Hassman, Rick D'elia and Sarah Ciston will read from their work featured in the issue, plus debut new writing for the auspicious occasion.

Join us for a raucous evening of soapbox-style pontificating, manifesto-ing, and poem-ing, then take a test drive in the patented Hyperbolic Chamber, outfitted to encourage all your grandiose statements and wildest dreams, courtesy of Bradford Earle.

A suggested donation gets you admission AND a numbered edition of the handmade issue (while supplies last). But, don't worry, we still like you and won't turn anyone away (for lack of funds, though we might turn away republicans).

Readings start promptly at 7:30, but the drinking starts promptly at 7. Help us to support Space Gallery by arriving early and thirsty!

Spontaneous rants encouraged.