if you don’t know about mcsweeney’s you are in for a treat.  mcsweeney’s is something i didn’t know about until i started working at lemuria and am more than jazzed about every time a new issue comes out.  here’s a little about mcsweeney’s taken from their website:

“McSweeney’s began in 1998 as a literary journal, edited by Dave Eggers, that published only works rejected by other magazines.  But after the first issue, the journal began to publish pieces primarily written with McSweeney’s in mind.  Since then, McSweeney’s has attracted works from some of the finest writers in the country, including Denis Johnson, William T. Vollmann, Rick Moody, Joyce Carol Oates, Heidi Julavits, Jonathan Lethem, Michael Chabon, Ben Marcus, Susan Straight, Roddy Doyle, T.C. Boyle, Steven Millhauser, Gabe Hudson, Robert Coover, Ann Beattie, and many others.”

“Today, McSweeney’s has grown to be one of the country’s best-read and widely-circulated literary journals, with an expanding, loyal subscriber base and strong independent bookstore following. As a small publishing house, McSweeney’s is committed to finding new voices—Gabe Hudson, Paul Collins, Neal Pollack, J.T. Leroy, John Hodgman, Amy Fusselman, Salvador Plascencia and Sean Wilsey are among those whose early work appeared in McSweeney’s—and promoting the work of gifted but underappreciated writers, such as Lydia Davis and Stephen Dixon.”

“Recent books and journals have appeared on bestseller lists around the country and have won multiple literary and design awards, including stories selected for the Best American Poetry, Best American Travel Writing, the O. Henry Awards, and the Best American Short Stories. Two of our books were finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Awards. Design awards include AIGA 50 Books Award, AIGA 365 Illustration Award, and the Print Design Regional Award. McSweeney’s books have appeared in design exhibits at the Smithsonian Museum and the Pasadena Museum.”

i’ve only been collecting mcsweeney’s issues for a couple of years and have only read a couple of them.  mcsweeney’s isn’t just collected for the words inside the issues but also for the amazing packaging that they come in.

“McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern publishes on a roughly quarterly schedule, and we try to make each issue very different from the last. One issue came in a box, one was Icelandic, and one looks like a pile of mail. In all, we give you groundbreaking fiction and much more.”

i collect the quarterly concern but that’s not all that they publish in the least.  they also have two other publications, a paper magazine and a dvd magazine.  

“The Believer is a monthly magazine where length is no object. There are book reviews that are not necessarily timely, and that are very often very long. There are interviews that are also very long. The Believer is printed in four colors on heavy stock paper.”

“Wholphin is a quarterly DVD magazine featuring short films, documentaries, animation, and instructional videos that have not, for whatever reason, found wide release. Recent issues of Wholphin have included films by Spike Jonze, David O. Russell, Miranda July, Miguel Arteta, Errol Morris, and Steven Soderbergh, and performances from John C. Reilly, Selma Blair, Patton Oswalt, Andy Richter, a monkey-faced eel, and many others.”

and just to top it off, they also publish books.  one of our first editions club picks from last year, Citrus County by John Brandon was published by mcsweeney’s.

by Zita

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