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ABOUT Two If By Sea

EDITORIAL STATEMENT

Two If By Sea directly erupted from the persistent activism of the editors' own personal work, art and lives. We wanted to create a platform that was inclusive, that welcomed activated artists and contributors, and that encouraged works that call out or reject racism, homophobia, misogyny, oppression, repression, and ecosystemic and other types of violence. That is why those ideals have always been included in our submission guidelines and editorial statement.

 

To state plainly, we at Two If By Sea are rigidly anti-racist and against all forms of essentializing and discrimination. We are driven by an unrelenting sense of justice and righteous indignation over the systemic discrimination and violence of our society and its institutions against Black Americans, Native Americans, women and other people who have been oppressed, and the continued brutalities, inequities, undermining, and maltreatment throughout time of these and other vulnerable communities. 
 

In every way, Two If By Sea is the alluvium created by a sea of our collective rage. We have always intended it to be a disruption.

Two If By Sea is a journal of water. One main focus of the journal is how water bodies have been the location of displacement, environmental injustice, imperialism, colonialism, slavery, and genocide. As a location for critical and creative engagement, we aspire to nurture a space in which people may create, advocate, agitate and crack open the conventions that contributed to our current environment of human rights violations, rampant economic injustice, racism and ecological disaster that is the foundation of our society. That is the contribution we commit to—to carve out a crevice, and like the eroding power of water, have your work open up canyons.

JOURNAL AESTHETIC

Water as resistance. Water as passage. Water as magic. Water as message.

 

Two If By Sea is a journal of water. 

 

Water, bordered by our internal contours or bound to earth (the eroding of land, the sifting of self) circulates our collective geographies and facilitates communication and connection—our overlapping currents, our signaling to one another across the expanse. 

 

Water can offer passage or bring doom or displacement; it can set one adrift. Water distorts sound to the body perceiving it, whether by distance or submersion, just as our perspective distorts what each of our senses perceive. Is water, then another human sense?

 

Water as wonder, as plane of imperialism, as container of mysteries, fables, and human poisons. The sea of our blood and the sea of the globe falls and rises to give breath. Or, our shoulders are barnacled with seashells. 

 

What is the language of water?

Two If By Sea is a newly-launched print and online literary and art journal published by the sirene of Two If By Sea Press. Each print issue will include visual art by featured artists, and a selection of text chosen from our open submissions. An online preview will be published in Summer 2020, and the print version will be available in Fall 2020. The online journal will feature additional visual, sound, and textual art. Now accepting submissions through August 15th!​

ABOUT US

Laura Vena is a writer, teacher, translator, animal activist, and curator whose work has appeared in Bombay Gin, Super Arrow, Tarpaulin Sky, In Posse Review, The Dirty Fabulous, Antennae and elsewhere. Her book, x/she: stardraped is a radical ecopoetics of the LA River and consists of a series of overlapping journeys—spiritual, cultural, linguistic, cartographic, geographical, and psychic. It is the winner of the 1913 Press First Book Prize by John Keene, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Debra Di Blasi and is available here. Laura holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Critical Studies from CalArts and is interested in works of a fantastic nature and those that investigate the ethical and aesthetic considerations of representation. Laura is the Fiction Editor at Entropy Magazine, and is the Founder and Creative Director of Blockhead Brigade, an organization that seeks to help Pit Bull type dogs & their families in need. You can find her online at www.lauravena.com

Megan Broughton is an L.A./Napa based artist, cellist, writer, editor, and freelancer. Her work has been exhibited in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Napa, New York, and Barcelona and she has held residencies at The Earthfire Institute in Tetonia Idaho, Can Serrat in Barcelona Spain, and The Arctic Circle in Svalbard Norway (2019). She has taught with multiple arts programs including the CalArts Community Arts Partnership, CSSSA, NOMAD Lab, and The Oxbow School. Her writing has been featured in FANZINE, Enclave, and Entropy, where she is a Contributing Editor. She earned a BFA in Fine Art from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in 2012 and is a CalArts Bay Area Alumnx Chapter Leader. You can see more of Megan's work here

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