Is your skull starting to bubble again? No worries. After 18 years as a paper-based litzine, Urban Graffiti is now online and is still "the antidote to all the precious, crapola lit mags out there, home to the ugly, the depressing, the sexy, the funny and the fucked up." (Broken Pencil #12) What UG did in print, UG now does online, and more. Instead of just an irregularly published litzine publishing an issue whenever the number of contributions warranted, UG online publishes "transgressive, discursive, post-realist writing, comics, b&w artwork, photography, and music concerned with the struggles of hard edged urban living, alternative lifestyles, deviant culture – presented in their most raw and unpretentious form" on a regular basis.

Is it possible that Canadian literary culture is just too damn polite to sustain an ongoing transgressive online magazine such as Urban Graffiti? I think not. There are vastly too many exceptional writers, poets, artists, and photographers in Canada doing exceptional work (and some of it, yes, even transgressive and post-realist). Someone recent wrote about the UG site: "Build it and they will come." I built it and they came. Now I make the same call for submissions I made almost 18 years ago to those writers, poets, and artists (new, emerging, and established) I served with the paper-based zine.

Join the likes of Phillip Quinn, Angela Hibbs, Bill Brown, Neale McDevitt (from UGX) and Matthew Firth, Catherine Owen, Amanda Earl, Bart Plantenga, George Amabile, and Mandie Lopatka (from UG 11) as Urban Graffiti begins its online adventure.

Click here for Mandate/Guidelines.

Unlike more traditionally published journals and periodicals, Urban Graffiti is an irregularly published zine. Because of this, and due to the nature of UG's content and it's primary means of advertising (word-of-mouth), UG has an "open door" submissions policy. While there have been and will be calls for submissions for particular issues, this by no means closes the door of UG's usual "open door" submissions policy. UG welcomes your fiction, poetry, prose essays, photography, artwork, comics, etc, at any time during the year.

URBAN GRAFFITI is a litzine of transgressive, discursive, post-realist writing concerned with the struggles of hard-edged urban living, alternative lifestyles, deviant culture -- and presented in their most raw and unpretentious form -- using sex, violence, shock value, parody, cynicism, irony, and black humour to explore the underside of contemporary urban existence.

Submit up to three pieces at a time, and follow these guidelines: Art, due to technological limitations, should be no bigger than 8 1 /2 by 11 inches. Exact reproduction is impossible. Manuscripts should be absolutely no longer than 15 pages, typed double-spaced. Fiction from 50 to 5000 words. Optimum length (for fiction, essays, etc.) is between five and ten pages.

Compensation is made in copies only, and URBAN GRAFFITI retains the right to reprint issues as PDF files and accepted submissions in anthology form.

Send all correspondences to:

Mark McCawley, editor

gse.mccawley@gmail.com

The February 1st, 2010 deadline for submissions for Urban Graffiti 11's "Debauchery & Vice" Issue is fast approaching. Email those submissions in and beat the deadline. For further information, please read earlier posts.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia describes 'vice' as "a practice or habit considered immoral, depraved, and/or degrading in the associated society. It can refer to a fault, a defect, an infirmity or merely a bad habit. Synonyms for vice include fault, depravity, sin, iniquity, wickedness and corruption. It's also a generic legal term for criminal offenses involving prostitution, lewdness, lasciviousness and obscenity. Vice is the opposite of virtue."

That certainly leaves the door wide open, at least thematically speaking, for Urban Graffiti 11. As long as submissions deal with "urban vice" in some way, shape, or form -- UG will consider it -- the more "immoral, depraved, and/or degrading" (in other words, transgressive) the better. 

URBAN GRAFFITI is a litzine of transgressive, discursive, post-realist writing concerned with the struggles of hard-edged urban living, alternative lifestyles, deviant culture -- and presented in their most raw and unpretentious form. Submissions of fiction, poetry, essays, comics, b&w artwork and photographs are welcome. Send all correspondences with a short creative bio c/o Mark McCawley, editor, to: gse.mccawley@gmail.com

Compensation is made in copies only, and URBAN GRAFFITI retains the right to reprint accepted submissions as a PDF file as well as in future anthology form.

Deadline for submissions: November, 2009.

Urban Graffiti X. Tenth issue. It's been a long time coming. Enjoy the flash version below, or download the PDF for yourself by clicking the corresponding button above. Latest version of Macromedia Flash recommended for flash viewing. For full screen, click on the top right button of the flash window below.

Urban Graffiti is a litzine of transgressive, discursive, post-realist writing concerned with the struggles of hard-edged urban living, alternative lifestyles, deviant culture -- presented in their most raw and unpretentious form -- using sex, violence, shock value, parody, cynicism, irony, and black humour to explore the underside of contemporary urban existence.

Submissions of fiction, poetry, essays, comics, b&w artwork and photographs on the theme of sexual violence and personal/social disintegration are presently welcome for Urban Graffiti's tenth issue.

Send all submissions to: gse.mccawley@gmail.com

Please include a brief bio, a photo, and any relevant weblinks with your submission.

Urban Graffiti retains the right to reprint accepted submissions in anthology form. Compensation is made in hard copies of the litzine, although free downloadable pdf files of each issue will also be made available.

After a four year hiatus from micro-press publishing, Greensleeve Editions launched the inaugural issue of Splurge, edited by Devin McCawley -- a zine which decodes and defaces the ostentation of contemporary consumer culture: by any means necessary -- at Edmonton's Black Dog Freehouse (10425 - 82 Avenue) on Sunday, April 13th, 2008. Payment for the zine was in the form of charitable donations (see posts on the Splurge website for more info). Besides the Black Dog donating their space for the event, the following bands also donated their own excellent performances to the cause: TEAM BUILDING, HEADBAND, and THE BLAZING VIOLETS (links to these bands also found on the Splurge website). Big Rock Brewery also donated a dollar from every Big Rock sold during the launch to our chosen charitable recipient for the event: Edmonton Street News. A very big thank you to everyone who donated their time, energies, and cash to make this launch a success, both up front and behind the scenes (you know who you are...wink, wink) and to all those who came out to the release party. An especially big thank you goes to the owner and management of the Black Dog Freehouse, Big Rock Brewery (for their forward thinking), and to the bands -- without your participation, there wouldn't have been any event.

For those of you who didn't, or couldn't, make it to the launch, free copies of Splurge are now available for download as pdf files from the Splurge website.

Remember to support your local food bank, homeless shelter societies, and youth shelters.

We are our brother's keepers.