Monsters and Dust is a journal of the innovative, fantastic, fabulous, subversive, radical, thoughtful, hilarious, witty, shrewd, cynical, optimistic, dark, surreal, and sublime.
Monsters and Dust was founded in Chicago in 2009 by Christopher Pappas, Aay Preston-Myint, and Joe Proulx. Inspired by our local artistic community and its mix of provocative aesthetics and intellectual rigor, we sought to create an outlet for the talents of those around us as well as bring new ideas into the mix - and so we created Monsters and Dust as a platform for queer thinking and expressive discourse around images, language, and poetics. Our first issue hit the internet after much anticipation, delay, and various complications involving computer code and pepper spray, in November of that year.
We are equally inspired by avant-garde publications and by the DIY communities in which we came up. As such, our editorial process and our methods of publishing and distributing work embrace criticality, collaboration and flux. In each issue, contributors respond to a given theme and are often introduced to unlikely collaborators via the editors. We released our first two issues, "Firsts" and "Darkness," on the web, and our first print issue, "Flowers," was released in Winter 2012/13 and features images, writing, and conversations from artists across the United States. Issue No. 4, "Pink/Punk," is out now and is our largest effort yet, with 216 pages of work.
Issue No. 4: PINK/PUNK | Issue No. 3: FLOWERS | Issue No. 2: DARKNESS | Issue No. 1: FIRSTS