Where’d Ya Go?
A Student’s Search for Online Literary Community
It started with an innocent assignment for the SU Press class. We were meant to research other small presses who shared our goals and values, then plan posts regarding community engagement. A shoutout, a repost, a link to a blog post—easy enough, right? In the age of social media, it seemed like a simple task, but what I found was a ghost town in the desert and my grade in desperate need of a drink.
One of the platforms we needed to use was X, formerly Twitter. I spent HOURS looking up small presses in Pennsylvania and, time after time, their websites had links to Substack, Instagram, Facebook, or Tumblr, but no X profiles. Upon finding some semblance of an X profile, one click was all it took to see that the last bit of activity happened pre-2020—pre-pandemic. That was the biggest clue. Many small presses exist out of the kindness and dedication of a small group of people who want to provide quality work and space for artists, writers, thinkers, editors, etc. But when the pandemic came around and shut down many facets of our lives, small presses suffered greatly. A passion project (not that all were) is hard to continue without a good mental space and financial stability, and we all saw how 2020 came at our knees with a rusty, lead pipe.
Internet research gave me multiple small presses and businesses that sought to foster genuine engagements with their communities, including: a cat cafe, The Scratching Post, dedicated to rehabilitating and rehousing homeless cats in the Susquehanna Valley; and A Novel Idea, a bookstore in Philadelphia that sells work from local authors. These businesses are perfect, beautiful representations of SU Press’s mission statement of empowering future writers, designers, and editors. But NO, a nameless billionaire had to send Twitter into the crevices of hell. Not only were people “let go” (*cough* fired *cough*) and a paywall introduced—irritate tantrums of babies with an inconceivable amount of money and resources at their disposal also began to escalate. But most recently, that certain unnamed billionaire has also stated that new X profiles will have to pay a small fee to make their first post, repost, or comment, effectively bringing the site to a deeper ring of hell.
This was no longer about a class assignment. I would get to the bottom of this conundrum; I would be the sole investigator in the case of Lit Mag Exodus.
Spoiler alert: I found nothing. I have scoured the Internet for an answer to the elusive why. Why did so many X users flee the scene? Where did they go? How do new/emerging presses gain a foothold? The mind points to Instagram, seeing that it is the closest thing to an answer, especially now that TikTok may be getting the axe in the United States. In my limited sample pool (and obvious bias), I’ve come across magazines where you can see the editors and the people you will be working with. Many of these magazines actually follow potential contributors rather than waiting for the consumers to come to them. Such is the example of an emerging press that followed me randomly (or calculatedly, I am unsure which my ego prefers) and I witnessed their climb from less than one hundred followers to about five hundred. I submitted some poetry and, within a week, I got a response that was personable, yet professional. I think this is where we will be going next. While I enjoy reading excerpts from big presses, I like feeling like part of something: a community or “literary” group.
From my vantage point (i.e. caffeinated with unsupervised access to the worldwideweb), the world of indie publishing has conquered many obstacles and has found creative ways to connect with people and distribute ideas and stories. Questionable legislation and billionaire pomp are only a few of the many hurdles small businesses and presses will have to maneuver, but my silly little mind believes we can do it with unshakable determination, and poise.
Noel Munguia-Moreno (’24) is a writer and poet from West Valley City, Utah, who writes of heritage and the land, and how the line blurs between here and there. His writing can be found in Sequoia Speaks Press, In Parentheses Magazine, and Sanctuary Magazine, among others. He has been awarded a Juliett Gibson Prize in Poetic Excellence and has been nominated for an Association of Writers & Writing Programs’ Intro Prize in Poetry.