They approached people in the field (like me, so you know, no bias there!) and picked their brains before the zine launched. And they incorporated audio at a time when few were doing it. Etc. etc. etc., hee.

Dear Mike, Thank you for this! Such an inspiring story – I never knew that’s how Goblin Fruit came to be!

I think the “millennial attitude” has brought a lot of much needed change to the entire publishing climate. My anecdotal support for this thesis, observed from the crow’s nest I once occupied in the genre poetry corner, would be what happened to the speculative poetry scene when twenty-somethings Amal El-Mohtar and Jessica Wick founded Goblin Fruit in 2006.

They didn’t simply start a zine, they gathered a community around them, it was really exciting to see. They went to conventions in different cities and held group reads and kind of accumulated a flock of like-minded young poets (and more than a few older ones). They came to Readercon in Boston in 2008 and held a Goblin Fruit party on a Thursday night that was packed — and apparently, it was the first time anyone had ever done anything like that at a Readercon! Writers like C.S.E. Cooney (2016 World Fantasy Award winner) and Nicole Kornher-Stace (2015 Andre Norton Award finalist) first came to my attention through Goblin Fruit.

I do understand the fighting back against discrimination thing; I did that in college — I really couldn’t understand why others told me to hang back and let it blow over. It wasn’t going to blow over…I needed it to change.

I really love this post. I think writers need to remember to take chances. We often take creative risks in what we write, why not in where we send, how often, and where?