dicey brown magazine

dicey brown is on the internet again, the chapbooks it published can be bought or read here

below is an interview with editor mazie louise montgomery

When did you start Dicey Brown and when did you stop it and why are you restarting it?

I started Dicey Brown in 2002, when I was in graduate school at USM. I wanted to 'intern' at a magazine but I had a kid so the idea of moving to another city, just to work for free for a magazine, seemed a little bit out of the question. And I wanted to learn more than just one thing, I wanted to learn how to make the pages, how to make the hard copies, send out rejections, all of that. Also I had all of these friends that wanted to be published but did not have an easy outlet, friends that needed books published, that kind of thing. So I started Dicey Brown. There was also a self serving mission in this also, besides wanting to learn how to make a magazine: I wanted to publish my own books and stories. So I kind of became obsessed with all of the poets of the past who had published their own work, in chapbooks they made on mimeograph machines or letter presses. And how they had also published their friends and that this all eventually ended up being some kind of "school" of poetry or writing. I'll admit, I had big dreams. I had this notion that there would end up being some "Internet" school of poetry, though not called that. I don't know what I thought it would be called. Maybe we should get together and decide what that is going to be called before its too late. I don't think that's too ballsy. I really don't.

When I stopped: I stopped some time in 2006 I think. I became overwhelmed with work and I just couldn't steer the magazine where I wanted it to go. I felt like it was a little out of my control. I wanted it to go someplace new but I didn't know where.

Why I am restarting: I still feel like I have new ideas for the magazine that could make it worthwhile to start again.

I felt excited about literary magazines around 2002 when Uber and Dicey Brown and Eyeshot and Hobart and Pindeldyboz and Parenthetical Note and Juked were all kind of new and publishing a lot and they all seemed to know each other and be working together or something. It was a strange kind of excitement that was unique, like kinds of excitement I felt when I was 5 or 6 or something. I don't feel that way anymore, what is wrong with me?

I don't know. I felt the same excitement and the same kind of let down. People move on and do other things.

I remember when Dicey Brown had a fiction editor and a poetry editor and a photography editor. I clicked a lot of links on the Dicey Brown page and looked at the pages a lot even though I had already looked at all the pages before. Do you do that with other magazines? What magazines?

Yes. I do that. I think that is why it felt so much like we were all working together. Everyone was looking on everyone else's links and submitting to their magazines. Lately I clicked on a link to a magazine called Paper Wall. I sent the editor some work and he is going to publish it. I actually felt excited about that. Like that kind of 5 or 6 year old excitement you were talking about. It's been a while since I was actively publishing. I have also looked at Lamination Colony, 3am, Juked, Action Yes, Alice Blue, Apocryphal Text, Noo Journal, etc.