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September 29, 2024
Almost a year of M7! October marks our first anniversary, and I'm grateful for everyone who's contributed to the mag — whether you've pubbed, subbed, shared, or left me a kind note saying how much you enjoy the project, please know I take it all to heart.
You have to humble yourself a bit when you start a project and deem yourself 'editor'. Every time I show up to the M7 inbox, it's not lost on me that I'm handling your hope and hard work. Who the fuck am I to say if it's good or not?
I stopped using 'good' as a metric a long time ago because, like any reader, my concept of what makes 'good' work is at best subjective and at worst flawed. Sometimes I'm asked what makes for a good M7 piece and the answer is that I often don't know until I see it.
I understand how that's frustrating to parse, but I like to think that it's also liberating. Some of the best pieces that come across my desk are ones which, on their face, have no direct link to the song they're representing. (I'm aware some of you slap a song title on your old work which has made rounds on Submittable. Fair play to you!)
I guess all I'm trying to say is that I'm proud of how M7 is shaping up. So many of you have taken the 'writing on music' call and run with it, interpreted it a thousand different ways. The mag is so much better for the breadth and depth of your creativity. Cheers to you.
For our anniversary issue we're running a special sub call that I'm hoping will shake things up. M7 contributor and hot shot writer Julián Martinez cooked up a call for the underground – all the best bands you've never heard of. We'll be running it for three weeks and I can't wait to see what comes of it!
Kicking off Volume 19, Ashley Kirkland meditates on the in-between of our tender teen years with "M+Ms", an essay that recounts the ways we police bodies and presentation—our own, and others'.
In "Destroyed by HippiePowers", V Gorman Koski relives an embarrassing moment at a party through a boozy haze.
Avee Chaudhuri summons a motley cast in the character-driven "Wet Dream", a slapstick comedy which defies summarization and will have you hooked from the first wild sentence to the last.
I'm a bit of a sucker for tongue-in-cheek and self reflexive, and was delighted to see Kimmy Joy tangle with the speaker of the poem on a fraught, meandering walk to the grocery in "Selbstportrait mit Kater".
Paige Cook colours the kiss that almost was in "Thank You For the Venom", an ode to candy-red lips whispering a strange come-on in the parking lot after a ska show.
"Lonely is a Man Without Love" drops us into a gossip-fuelled, tipsy card game among housewives of another era, settling quietly on the narrator's quietly defiant romance with a man they've deemed unworthy.
As always, enjoy. And hop in my inbox if you haven't yet! Subs are always open. You're what makes M7 great.
xo,
Kirsti
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