issue 12 | fall 2025

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Not long after our first issue, it became glaringly clear that deadline-focused climate reporting is overly optimistic and ineffective at inspiring change. Dread is more contagious than hope. Paralysis is easier than action at the level of governments. The so-called United States is currently doing everything it can to exacerbate the poisoning of the planet, the genocide of Palestinians, and the bodily autonomy of pretty much everyone; even before the current administration there was lots of talk but no action.

So what does a literary journal have to offer that our leaders, our newspapers and podcasts and scientists can’t? And how relevant could it possibly be if said journal is devoted to publishing a narrow slice of trans writers and artists working in a particular vein? Here are a few of the things that I personally think smoke and mold has to offer in this moment that most others don’t:

Slowness

We publish two issues a year, with between five and ten artists per issue. In between we publish occasional interviews with artists and writers who we think our audience will benefit hearing from, but our pace is slow, both for ourselves and for our readers. There are pieces in this issue that have been revised collaboratively over more than a year. We don’t want to exhaust you (or us) with content; in fact, we hope that the work we publish spans a wide enough range in genre and form that ‘content’ is not a word that comes to mind. Content takes the shape of the container it’s poured into to facilitate quick binging and mindless consumption; literature is constantly experimenting with form, voice, and structure. Literature asks you to slow down and think about what you’re experiencing, regardless of whether or not you ‘like’ or ‘relate’ to it.

Content takes the shape of the container it’s poured into to facilitate quick binging and mindless consumption; literature is constantly experimenting with form, voice, and structure.

Jun Maruyama’s story “Licorice Theft,” as just one example, asks you to follow the hypnotically strange process of digestion, mastication, and recombination as an enlightened experience. Who could possibly identify with that? And yet, who couldn’t? Or Mei Kazama’s “Drawing as Destination Forever Arriving,” which pulls the reader through a series of drawings and reflections, both academic and ghostly, never arriving but always examining closely the relationship between the drawer, the page, and the past. These are slow-burn narratives that merit pausing in one’s normal activities to be absorbed.

Knowing Our Niche

One word to describe us is niche. Culturally, this term has come to mean something that appeals to a hyperspecific small group of people with shared interests outside the mainstream. But our niche is wide. Our niche is vast. Our niche is ecological: we strive to establish a habitat with the necessities for existence of a species of writer. We know who we appeal to. We are invested in the narrative possibilities trans lives bring to our changing nature-culture. Take Aster Olsen’s story from this issue, which relates “The Stages of Contagious Desire” in what might be an instruction manual for someone seeking to cultivate infection, or a list of symptoms to watch out for in disease progression. The world is changing, and who knows this better than our trans, nonbinary, indigenous, Black and other writers of color; poets, and writers forged in the streambed of change?

Our niche is ecological: we strive to establish a habitat with the necessities for existence of a certain species of writer.

We delight in sharing the work of these artists with our readers, and in growing the number of people who count themselves among them (we want to convert you) whether this be through publishing first-time authors, first English-language translations of an overlooked trans writer, or introducing someone to the world of weird online publishing for the first time, where comics like chanci’s Horseflies of the Apocalypse can live alongside poems like Hayden Berry’s “Pocket Notes on my Return to Natural Fluidity.” Where the soft queer mycelial mysticism of Wren Hanks’ “The Pink Phone Call” and the volcanic eruptions of desire in Ikaikaonalani James’s “i love a lesbian” can coexist and expand the queer ecoweird universe together. 

Independence

Knowing our niche also means looking left when everyone else is pointing right. We are unmoored from any news cycle, jet stream, flight path or fulfillment center. We are online-only, so our costs are low. We are funded exclusively by donations from readers and out-of-pocket by our editors, therefore we don’t need to chase restrictive grant monies that can be clawed back. We are independent of any national or university endowment, and so we can be full-throated in our support of transgender people, in our support of Palestinians, in our antizionism, and in our disdain of big banks laundering their blood money through the arts. These days, we do not take any of this for granted. While in the past we might have felt small and insignificant, backwards and obsessed with a narrow range of literary production, today all of this makes smoke and mold more vital than ever as a bastion of independent, globally-focused, trans-centered art. 

We are independent of any national or university endowment, and so we can be full-throated in our support of transgender people, in our support of Palestinians, in our antizionism, and in our disdain of big banks laundering their blood money through the arts.

These are just the first three reasons that come to mind for me while writing this intro. If there is a reason you love smoke and mold, I hope you’ll share it with us, or better yet, with your friends and lovers. I hope you’ll take an afternoon to slow down and read through the work here. Ironically, despite our expiration date, smoke and mold is not a boom-and-bust literary journal; we don’t burn through resources for two issues only to throw our hands up and shutter when the beneficent millionaires stop answering our calls. Our work is the slow patient relationship building, editing, and devotion to our writers and readers.

We seek to live our mission to the very end. Having an end has let us live this mission fully. Some things have an end. We do, and so do you, but it’s not yet <3

xxoo Cal
Publisher of smoke and mold
September 2025