Monday Night press

The Fall 2021 edition marks final issue of Monday Night. We started as a small print zine in 2001 and over the past 20 years have published more than 250 writers. We are now sunsetting the journal to focus on making chapbooks through Monday Night Press and to have more time for writing, reading, sleeping, and general goofing off. 

Many thanks to the current staff—Marissa Bell Toffoli, Patrick Duggan, Sharon McGill, Della Watson, and Valerie Witte—for their efforts to help produce this farewell issue. 

The issue features an excerpt from Heidi Kasa’s chapbook, Split, which will be released by Monday Night Press this spring. Other contributors include Daisy Bassen, Miriam Borgstrom, Stanford Chen, Christine Choi, Richard Cochnar, Olivia Cronk, Barbara Daniels, Adele Evershed, Elliot Harmon, Tom Ipri, Kathryn Lipari, Kate Maxwell, and Andrea Rexilius. Each of their pages are linked below.

As we begin the next chapter in the story of Monday Night, we ask you to join us in honoring Elliot Harmon, who passed away from cancer in October. Earlier this year, he had agreed to let us publish a selection from his manuscript, “Gray and Something.” Sadly, he wasn’t able to see it in print. This final, farewell issue of Monday Night Lit is dedicated to Elliot. We miss you, friend. 

Jessica Wickens, editor-in-chief

Congratulations to Marlon Hacla and translator Kristine Ong Muslim on the publication of the bilingual poetry collection Melismas by OOMPH!. We were delighted to include excerpts from this work in issue 22 of Monday Night. Support independent publishing and buy your copy today!

Belated congratulations to Matt Tompkins on his first novel! Odsburg was published by Ooligan Press in fall 2019. Get a copy here.

About Odsburg: An eccentric writer and self-proclaimed “socio-anthropo-lingui-loreologist” ventures into the fictional town of Odsburg, Washington, to research the location’s unusual history and residents. Convinced the name of the town is no coincidence, Wallace Jenkins-Ross goes about uncovering its mysteries through shady (and sometimes illegal) means. He discovers one man contending with a family of mountain lions living in his basement, another who can’t stop hallucinating after getting laser eye surgery, and a corporate employee whose skin is gradually receding. He unravels the puzzle of Odsburg through recordings, flyers, radio ads, and his own eye-witness accounts. 

We’ve been delighted to publish Matt Tompkins’ stories over the years in the journal and in a recent chapbook, Failures. He is also the author of Souvenirs and Other Stories (Conium Press), Studies in Hybrid Morphology (tNY Press) and Topia (Red Bird Chapbooks).

We’re so excited for our next book: Which Way Will the Water Drag Our Bodies? by Tamer Sa’id Mostafa.

Tamer Sa’id Mostafa (pronouns: he/him/his) is an always-proud Stockton, California, native whose work has appeared in over twenty journals and magazines such as Confrontation, Literary Orphans, and Zone 3, among others. As an Arab-American Muslim, social worker, and aspiring narrative therapist, he reflects on life through spirituality, an evolving commitment to social justice, and the music of Bone Thugs-n-Harmony.

Nana K. Twumasi, a longtime editor of Monday Night, is moving on to new projects. We’re grateful for her creativity, insight, and friendship as well as hours and hours of reading over the past decade. During Nana’s tenure, we put the journal online, launched a small press, and hosted cool events at Cafe Van Kleef, E.M. Wolfman Books, and other venues. 

Nana is a tremendous literary author and content creator in her own right. Nana’s prose and nonfiction work has been published in various literary journals. By day, Nana works as a book editor in Emeryville, CA, and she also writes for the East Bay Monthly and for Oakland and Alameda Magazines. You can follow her endeavors at https://nanakt.com/, on Instagram @fiftyfootroman, or on Twitter @editrix_n.  

We’re still reeling from the awesomeness of AWP 2019. Monday Night shared a table with the Bay Area Correspondence School at the Book Fair, and we had lots of chapbooks and swag to share. Dozens of new fans signed up for our mailing list, grabbed free buttons, and purchased fresh-off-the-press editions of our new chapbooks. Our special-edition bookmarks featuring art from our covers were so popular we ran out!

If you missed out on the conference, you can still buy chapbooks on our MN Press page.