Contents:

Best and Worst: A Review of our 12 Years

Tributes and Top Ten Lists

A Small History of AVSM

Issues That Never Materialized

The Future of the Little Magazine

Pseudonyms Finally Revealed!

Price: A limited number of paper copies are available; price for this special issue is $1.50.

A FEW LAST WORDS FROM OUR BELOVED PUBLISHER

This was almost the issue that never happened, though it has been promised for more than five years now. The last issue, number 24, appeared more than a year and a half ago. Of course there was no reason I couldn't stop AVSM at issue 24, but I had so long promised a "last issue/number 25" to my dwindling number of subscribers (37 at present, down from a high of nearly 200), I felt obligated to do it. And I needed some kind of closure on this thing.

The very reasons I wanted to stop publishing AVSM were what kept me from getting the last issue together: I no longer have the luxury of time I enjoyed in my impoverished twenties. Now, almost 12 years later and at nearly 40 years of age, with a small child, a job and an active family life, I often have only three 30-minute subway rides to work to write each week (going home, I usually have to stand up). Bits and pieces can be written down, but no cohesive, long-term projects can be undertaken.

I have to stop publishing this magazine (besides the fact that it is taking me more than a year to publish each 16-page issue) because it is not nearly as good as it could be. My mind does not work well in tiny amounts of time, while squeezed into a seat with someone else, my head painfully bent over the notebook in my lap or in 35 minute bursts at night, after my child is in bed. In addition, I have had no time or energy to market it, to solicit writing, to do all the things a good publisher would do.

I am almost embarassed to send this issue to my subscribers, who have probably given up on ever receiving it, figuring their subscription was more like a donation to me. (My one excuse for its tardiness is that last year I was belatedly diagnosed with Lyme disease, and I'm still in the process of recovering from it). But, here it is anyway. I'm sure I'll miss doing it, even though I was barely doing it in the end. When I have time, and I'm inspired, I may continue to add new things to the AVSM web page (http://members.aol.com/avsm/avsm.html); and I still may do an "Ed Norton Anthology of Recent Literature" -- maybe in 25 years, when I retire...

BEST AND WORST, Etc.: .
A Look at AVSM'S 12 Years

Reviews!

WORST REVIEW AVSM RECEIVED:

Small Magazine Review (April 1995), by Hugh Fox

"'A Very Small Magazine' is all satire, mostly essays and mostly unfunny. Which it's supposed to be, I suppose, because, after all, it is identified as the Stupid Poetry Anthology. Well, the content certainly fits the label. Like there's a piece on a new type of NEH grant -- a grant for a year NOT TO WRITE POETRY... All of which is kind of funny, I suppose.

"The same way that the parody on Plath (by editor Beth Blevins) is funny... But it gets complicated, doesn't it? Who exactly is stupid here, Plath or Blevins?".

I guess we'll never know...

* * * * * * * * *

BEST REVIEW(S) AVSM RECEIVED:

Factsheet Five (Boston, MA), Issue #17, 1986, p. 35. [Reviews issue 2] "Small indeed, but oh what a gem this is! This is essential reading for the lover of satire and small press, especially the Small Anthology of Stupid Poetry... Hilarious! Also features Fascion and New Egg sections, all with a very deft wit."

NEXT EXIT (Kingston, Ontario, CANADA), Number 18, March 1991. [Reviews issue 15] "I wanna be just like Beth Blevins when I grow up. Every issue of AVSM is very small and very perfect. Issue #15 is another in the Stupid Poetry Anthology series and the introduction by Aenede Tenyure sets the tone for parodies from Genesis to rap."

Letters!

STRANGE LETTERS:

May 15, 1991 and August 31, 1991 (same letter, sent twice)

(no S.A.S.E. enclosed; no cover letter): "...OH! LOVE SEEKERS: ALL! SEEK AND YOU SHALL SURELY FIND: As did Whitman: Read his poem beginning: "Once I passed through a populous city..." The word 'love' is much too loosely used in our time. It has been lowered to be a synonym with just plain sex. So unthinking! Really stupid! ... Seek!

* * * * * * * * *

August 10, 1995

From: The Alice Berniece Warner Boardman Stevens Institute of Trio-Rhythmic Psychology, Escondido Council for Self-Esteem, Don Stevens, C.P.C.U., Founder

FsS's: CAN THERE BE HOPE IN THESE DARKEST DAYS WHEN THE HORDES OF EVIL AND THE ANTI-CHRIST AND THE BARBARIAN LED BY THE U.S., GERMANY, JAPAN, ENGLAND, ETC. RUN ROUGHSHOD OVER PEOPLE?... LET'S GO BACK TO THE HOME AND WHAT DO WE FIND? RELATIONSHIPS ARE IN SHAMBLES DUE TO INCOMPATIBILITY. BUT THERE IS NO NEED FOR THIS! A SIMPLE GUIDE IN THE FORM OF "BIO-RHYTHM" BY GITTERSON FOR $5.50 IN PRINT...."

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NAME-DROPPING SUBMISSION LETTERS

#1 NAME-DROPPING SUBMISSION LETTERS: From Washington, D.C.:

..."studied poetry... under the late Richard Hugo and majored in English literature at Bowdoin College (the alma mater of Hawthorne and Longfellow...) where I took classes from novelist Larry Hall and the late poet Louis Cox. My father... had a poem published on the first page of the New York Times..."

SECOND MOST NAME-DROPPING SUBMISSION LETTER (From Los Angeles):

"P.S. Yes. (Jay) Leno.... I sorta know him.... Once years ago, I was with comedian GEORGE MILLER... and Leno said to me, .... Joan Rivers is the same way, or was anyway.... I worked with Merv Griffin and Steve Allen...."

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MOST FAMOUS SUBSCRIBER?

Shortly after "Finding Your Inner Julia Child" appeared in AVSM #23 in 1995, a character in Jeff MacNelly's comic strip "Shoe" said the waitress was "still searching for her inner Julia Child". Beth Blevins wrote Mr. MacNelly trying to claim first rights to the "inner Julia Child" thing. Mr. MacNelly graciously wrote back, stating: "I really enjoyed your magazine, and the fact that you and I are dealing with our 'inner Julia Child' obviously means this is a great thought whose time has come! Enclosed is 3 bucks for my subscription."

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Tributes!

BEST (AND ONLY) POETIC TRIBUTE WE RECEIVED (SENT BY CERTIFIED MAIL!)

"A slow-poke's response to the Metro poet"

(Based on an article about AVSM in the Washington Post Magazine, 3/10/91)

TO BETH BLEVINS

I see you have no time for hiking
To get to work - no small detail!
Though it may not be to your liking,
You have to ride the metro rail.

And while you're moving, riding, sliding,
You don't get angry, bored or sad
Because your thoughts you are confiding
To a devoted memo pad.

Hold on to humor and satire;
You've got what every post wants -
A gift that all of us admire,
Which gets immediate response.

by Caroline (Kira) Slavin
March 10, 1991
(mailed March 23, 1991)

Slow-poke? Slow is being acknowledged for the first time by AVSM 6 years later, in September 1997.

* * * * * * * * *

Submissions and Queries!

...

MOST AMBITIOUS QUERY:

To Whom It May Concern:

In May 1991, I will be graduating from the University of Mississippi with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English.... I will be in your area for interviews March 6 - 16, 1991 and would appreciate a chance to visit with the appropriate personnel officer to discuss employment opportunities. Enclosed herewith for your review is my resume. Thank you for your cooperation in this manner. Sincerely, Melanie D. R.

* * * * * * * * *

LONGEST TIME WE TOOK TO RESPOND TO A SUBMISSION:

Drawings by Walt Phillips of Riverside, CA., sent April 1988. Our first and only response: in this issue -- a total of 9 years. We put aside his drawings, wondering when we could use them. Then we forgot about them. Then we found them again and kept meaning to write him for the last three or four years... Sorry! We'll return them in the SASE with the 22 cent stamp tomorrow!

Miscellaneous!

HOW DID AVSM REALLY BEGIN?

In the spring of 1985, I wrote a parody of a collection of women's diaries ("Ariadne's Web") and wondered who or what might ever publish them -- I knew of no source for literary or feminist parodies. That's when I decided I would publish them myself. The name, the size, the silliness that would become "A Very Small Magazine", all came together late that night as I retyped the parodies. But it was actually the cumulation of years of discussion and wishful thinking. Kim Kupperman, a colleague from the student newspaper at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and I had been talking about starting a little magazine for years.

Having little money to print several copies of a regular-sized magazine, I photocopied and shrank my typed pages down to 5 1/2" x 4 1/4" sheets (1/4 a regular photocopy page), almost the exact size of the "dummy" we used to make each week at our college newspaper. I made a few photocopies of the shrunken little magazine then cut it in half (I think with scissors, the first couple of issues). I only had a baby-sized stapler for stapling the copies together. Since it wouldn't reach into the center of the folded half-pages, I had to open up the stapler, hold the pages against a cork bulletin board, pound the stapler against the paper, then press down the ends of the two staples on the inside of the magazine with my thumbnails. Thus, the production of the first couple of issues was a painful process.

WHY WAS IT CALLED A VERY SMALL MAGAZINE?

I had once printed one issue of a magazine called "Another Small Magazine" when I lived in Redlands, California in the late 1970s, and I figured this magazine was kind of like that, only very small. I couldn't think of another name for it. "Another Another Small Magazine" was too long and I couldn't pledge myself to any mono-word title or pun-filled phrase that would either summarize or serve as a metaphor for what was contained inside.

WHY DID AVSM CONTINUE?

AVSM continued because I didn't know where else to put my satirical writing. I was and still am clueless about how and in which publications I might place it. I also love small, contained environments. When I was a child, I constructed villages inside shoeboxes because I liked the sense of working within tight boundaries and the feeling of limited omnipotence it gave me. AVSM is an evolution of such feelings and intentions.

AVSM has almost always included humorous writing of some sort and usually something by me. Occasionally, entire issues have been turned over to another writer or editor. Kim Kupperman published issues 3 and 5 in Paris; she entirely wrote issue 14, the Carabina Slim issue. But most of the history of AVSM is a history of me writing something, editing other things, then typing, cutting, pasting (manually or, later, by computer), running to the copy store, cutting the printed pages in half (to reach the very small size it was until issue 21), stapling until my palm was sore, folding, typing names into a subscriber's database, then running off labels, pasting them to envelopes and mailing them. This was a fine pastime when I first started the magazine because I was nearly unemployed, living at home with my parents; in a small town where TV is the major form of entertainment, creative impulses poured out of me, like dreams flowing into a sleeping mind. And I had the time to act upon them. I could stay up all night and write, if I wanted. I could nearly put together whole issues in one extended sitting.

When I started I never could have envisioned the 100 plus subscribers I would mail issues to, nor the number of people who would request sample issues. Nor did I ever envision the number of people who would submit stuff. This eventually took up most of my time with the magazine, opening up manila envelopes, reading submissions, and stuffing the contents along with a rejection slip back into the SASE.

Even when I found a job as a reporter, by the summer of 1985 and on into early fall 1986, I didn't mind doing the magazine in my spare time because I had no social life. I was stuck in a bureau office in the mountains of North Carolina where there were no single men my age, at least who were interested in women. It gave me a comforting sense of identity in my off-hours -- of being a magazine editor, not a single woman in her late 20s who hadn't had a date in a year and who lived in a tiny (7' x 17') apartment with no furniture of her own.

WHY DO YOU WANT TO KILL AVSM, THEN?

After I went off to graduate school in 1986, I began publishing issues less frequently. I still had some spare time, despite carrying a full load of classes and working up to 30 hours a week, which I spent partly answering AVSM correspondence. Then I moved to D.C. and began working full-ime. I still had no social life, and found myself cocooning with my husband in our waterfront apartment. Sitting in front of a computer and putting an issue together in my off-hours was not taking me out of my cocoon. Even then, I think I began to visualize an end to it all. I've spent beautiful days in front of a computer screen struggling to get text to fit into the small AVSM desktop format, while children and grown-ups were playing outside. And sitting in front of a computer at home was too much like being at work. It wasn't helping my eyesight nor my natural extroversion.

When I had a child five years ago, that was the middle of the end. I've found I have almost no spare time. I'd rather play with him than sit here in front of the computer (or he won't let me sit in front of the computer -- he wants to use it himself!). And I've found, after reading through hundreds of bad poems, I don't have enough patience to be an editor, at least the kind where one must sift through five dozen submissions to find anything appearing to be even slightly whimsical or funny, without getting paid to do it. Sometime after the demise of AVSM, when I have more free time and perhaps even a book contract, I hope to produce an anthology of silly writing and parodies, using many of the pieces that have appeared in AVSM. (Please DON'T submit anything to this project unless you hear from me!)

WHY DON'T YOU HAVE MORE FREE TIME?

I'm beginning to think that there are those who get published, and those who sleep. I might have published issue 35 of AVSM by now if I only needed three hours of sleep per night. But I've finally admitted to myself that I need 8 hours of sleep to be a totally functioning and happy person. I need to dream as much as I need to sleep. Who really wants to live without dreams?

HOW COULD I HAVE GOTTEN PUBLISHED IN AVSM?

Hundreds of things were submitted to AVSM by people who obviously never read an issue of AVSM in their lives. They assumed the three or four line description in publishers' listings was enough to go on, and so spent up to $2.00 in postage to send manuscripts and SASEs instead of spending a lousy $1.25 for a sample copy. Most writers seemed to interpret the publishers' descriptions in their own weird way. I said I wanted short pieces, and I got novellas or 20-page excerpts from novels; I said I wanted humorous essays, and I got pieces about incest written from the victim's perspective, or sci-fi stories about alien invasions.

Over the years, I received morbid, cryptic, weird, and unreadable writing. But mostly what I received was very blasé stuff, stories about men and women with unresolved conflicts, strange poems with unknown intentions or subjects, short pieces straining to be humorous -- basically, things that didn't need to be written down in the first place or to be shown to an outside audience. And I've had to dive into it all, trying to be fair by reading most things all the way to the end before nixing them.

Anyway, if I had it to do over, I would have required all potential contributors to purchase an issue of the magazine. There is some controversy among small magazine editors about this practice now, with some calling it censorship, and others calling it a good business practice. I see it now as being no different than fiction or writing contests requiring readers' or entry fees of up to $10. If I had devised this rule earlier, I might not have so many extra copies of back issues piling up in boxes in my house. And I might not have spent so much time reading bad writing. Then again, it might have been difficult to reject someone who simultaneously sent a check for a two-year subscription along with their submission. But I would have liked to know what that feels like.

In conclusion, I chalk up all the work I did on AVSM, especially reading through submissions, as good experience, both in helping me slowly realize I don't want to do this again for any significant period or any significant way (unless maybe I'm paid for it!), and in helping me know what I don't want to write. It was through AVSM, writing for it and reading all the submissions of bad poetry, that I finally realized I don't want to write poetry. The world is already full of bad poetry. I'm not even sure it needs my trying-to-be bad poetry or poetic satires. On to the short story form!

Poets' Party Handbook
A handbook (we promised, repeatedly), with short or polemic essays on various topics: morning poetry in public classrooms, poetic license and how to have it, funding for graffiti artists who spray poetry on walls, Poets' Party as the third political party, etc. [Never completed because our publisher stopped believing in Poetry in 1992.]

Sleep Issue
It would have included: "Strange Bedfellows", a collective dream by our readers and unusual sleeping habits of writers past. [Not pursued so I could sleep 8 hours]

Work issue
To have included: article on jobs writers and artists have held throughout history ; lists of jobs attempted and performed by AVSM readers; descriptions of people's current jobs. [Never completed because I started working full-time.]

The Last Chapbook of Edward Jones
The story of a poet who now refuses to write poetry because he wants to be the only person in America who doesn't consider himself some kind of poet. Would have included essays on the state of bad poetry in America today and an mythical interview with E. Jones, persuaded to talk about his life and non-art after being given a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20. [This could be my doctoral dissertation instead, if I ever go back to school].

by Beth Blevins (again)

THE PAPER-LESS FUTURE OF MAGAZINE PUBLISHING I have three words for you: World Wide Web.

Don't bother to make a magazine on paper. Unless you have a load of free time to mail it out to people and to lay it out/do desktop publishing, print it and collate it, put it on a web page. You can have a monthly account with America Online for as low as $4.95/month -- and for each screen name (you can have up to five for one account), you can load up a web page. On each web page, you can load up several issues, especially if they are not heavy on graphics, i.e., taking up a lot of disk space. You can get it indexed by a screen engine or two. If they won't index you, you still may be able to get linked from several web sites and links.

The monthly charge you incur will be cheaper in the long run than the cost of printing and postage. For the last several issues of AVSM, I was printing 100 copies. Cost of printing averaged about $.55 per issue. Then postage was $.32. This doesn't include the cost of envelopes or labels, color paper for a cover, or the other processes involved in creating a finished product including shrinking images or doing image overlays. In other words, I wasn't making money. And I wasn't even selling out all 100 issues, due mostly to lack of energy to sell and promote it. They're sitting in plastic boxes in my study and attic. I never even made an effort to approach local book stores to display or sell issues. I didn't even attempt to donate copies to the local library. These are the typical things a publisher should do. I used to sell AVSM in Washington at the Washington Project for the Arts bookstore, but then WPA went bust. I could walk there and back on my lunch hour, selling them maybe five issues at 50 cents a copy (losing money on the transaction since this usually didn't cover print costs). In the time it would take to walk there, even in the time it will take to write this little essay, I could load up an electronic issue which could be seen, potentially, by several thousand people. (I couldn't have imagined this possibility 10 years ago, when I began AVSM!) Paper just doesn't make sense for people who want to be publishers but don't have all the time to do all the grunt work required.

Another problem with paper is that it requires a cash transaction. Despite my continued pleas for payment in cash, most people sent checks made out to "A Very Small Magazine," which my bank would not permit me to deposit in my personal checking account. This necessitated my opening a business checking account. Fortunately, I found a local credit union which would let me do this without a monthly charge. Unfortunately, the cost of a bounced check for a business account is around $25 -- and I had at least one AVSM check bounce, nearly wiping out my account. Also, having a business account for AVSM did not prevent people from making out checks to unknown entities. For instance, I placed my one and only classified ad for AVSM in Harper's Magazine and they put my one-word description "Offbeat!" in bold; thus, I received many checks made out to "Offbeat", which the credit union wouldn't take and I made very little money back on the $45 I spent in placing the ad. A web magazine wouldn't necessarily require paid publicity because it could be printed, publicized and linked via the Web.

To prove my new-found love of the Internet, only enough copies of this issue are being printed on paper for existing subscribers and possible collectors. Most of the text of this issue will be loaded up on the web, where you're probably reading this. If you aren't reading it on the web, the address is: http://members.aol.com/avsm/avsm.html

Alternatively, you could set up your magazine so that people can subscribe to it via email and it will automatically be sent to their email boxes. But I think this is almost as much trouble as printing it on paper. This method of distribution is used by electronic newsletters who have advertisements to help pay for the cost of distribution. Approach it only if you are truly techno-savvy or have a special reason for doing it this way, like charging people for subscriptions.

WHY DO IT?

Before you begin, you probably should ask yourself, "Does the world really need another zine? And, if so, how will mine be unique?" (Please note: I never asked myself this question). And if you don't care to answer this question, or you don't care if the world needs another zine because you want to publish yourself and your friends, you probably don't need to put a lot of effort into creating a paper version of a magazine. No one who publishes a little magazine really expects to make money. The ones that earn fleeting fame and maybe even profits tend to be published by people with start-up money or a wealth of time, or both. The established media likes the cute or the flashy. Internet magazines are hot now, but they might not be in a few weeks or months as the WWW gets ever more crowded. Home pages are now substituting for publishing efforts for many people. If you have a really interesting and useful home page on the WWW, you might not even need to think about publishing a magazine, as well. Home pages in the '90s and '00s will be what zines were in the '80s except they will be more accessible.

But there is a certain drive which some people have, which turns them into little magazine publishers. For me, it was a combination of several factors which led me to this fateful venture. I had a desire to make myself heard immediately, without having to spend hours and hours submitting stuff to publications and having it rejected; and I felt a need to create something out of thin air, from start to finish. If you have this desire and you like to write or compile creative works, you're probably a little magazine publisher at heart. It is certainly not the most wasteful thing you could do with your time. And in most ways, I respect what I've accomplished, however small. Many little ideas I've had in the last decade or so have found a home. They still could be languishing inside memo pads and spiral notebooks, but they found some kind of home and got some little attention. I didn't wait for someone to tell me this stuff was unsuitable for their publication, or not what they were looking for at this time, I just put it out there anyway. There has to be some satisfaction in doing that. The other satisfaction came from being a "publisher". A publisher has the attention, even adoration of writers, especially unpublished ones. I became steady correspondents with several of the writers who appeared in the pages of AVSM -- people I hadn't known before. And AVSM received serious reviews and listings in small and big publications and directories -- scribbling in a notebook won't provide that kind of attention. Someone actually noticed my writing because it was "published", even if I basically published it myself.

SOME ARGUMENTS FOR PAPER

It's portable, it feels good to create something you can actually hold in your hand, you can do fancier things with graphics and lay-out (unless you have a scanner and high-end graphics software). If money is no issue, you can pay to have several hundred copies distributed, and you might even pay someone to help you lay it out and to distribute and publicize it. I won't talk you out of printing it on paper, then. Perhaps the most convincing argument for paper will come from people who lack a modem or even a computer. You can still publish a magazine. My first seven issues were done on a typewriter, with the pages shrunk to 75% on a photocopier then cut and pasted for printing. I look back upon it as a hassle, but it was a learning experience also, to see how far I could take a publication using primitive equipment. Of course, anything is possible; I used to print "The Blevins Weekly" by hand, using carbon paper to make additional copies, as a way of making pocket change. That was when I was eight years old.

Another benefit of printing on paper is you'll receive free "trade" copies from other little magazine publishers. I have a huge file drawer filled with weird and wonderful publications I've received over the last ten years, from the minimalistic one-page newsletters to bound and beautifully illustrated tomes. And I've corresponded with other publishers and have sometimes even made distant friends this way.

PUBLICIZING YOUR ELECTRONIC OR PAPER ZINE

If you've decided to go ahead and do it, whether on paper or on the web, you'll need to ask yourself how much exposure you want your magazine to have, realizing that advertising the existence of your magazine will leave you open to receiving a multitude of submissions from the people reading the listings of it. Most directories exist because would-be writers buy them, looking for markets. Few, if any, directories would list your magazine if you state "No outside contributors, please." Unless you love to read all kinds of poetry, no matter how poorly written, or unless you want to publish a magazine strictly devoted to poetry, in all formats and from all kinds of writers, do not list your magazine in poetry directories. Also, if you are planning a truly small magazine, under 50 pages, you probably don't want to list it in the "Novel and Short Story Writers Market". I listed AVSM there a couple of years and suddenly began receiving very long submissions, despite my plea for five pages or under of typed, double-spaced writing.
I will list below the usual and persistent places where you can list your magazine:

- The International Directory of Little Magazines and Small Presses. Published by Dustbooks, P.O. Box 100, Paradise, CA 95969. The Bible of little magazine publishing. Lists hundreds of little magazines and small press publishing houses. They listed AVSM every year I sent them a description. Descriptions are given alphabetically, with a subject grouping of titles in the back. Be careful which subject categories you choose! The more categories you choose, the more and more divergent submissions you'll receive.
- FactSheet Five. Available on the WWW and in paper. This used to be published three or four times a year, but last time I checked (June 1997), they hadn't published any new zine reviews since Spring 1996. This is too bad since FF is the best known magazine about the zine scene. Unlike the "International Directory", these guys actually review your magazine. This is how I earned most of my subscribers who were not my immediate friends. You'll need to send your paper copy, or email them your web address. Also offers links to over 1,000 electronic publications from around the net, and advice on starting a zine. Write them at: F5, PO Box 170099, SF CA 94117-0099 (enclose a SASE), or, check their web site to see what's going on with them before submitting your magazine for review: http://www.well.com/conf/f5/zines.html
- I also was able to list AVSM in Ulrich's International Directory of Magazines, a library standard, and in a variety of other little magazines which did zine features or reviews. These magazines will find you once you list your magazine in a directory, or you can send a copy of yours requesting a trade.

Good luck in your ventures, and please don't write me for advice or drop me a line about how you're doing! I would welcome seeing your magazines, but don't expect me to write back anytime soon. You can send a copy of your e-zine to the email address below.

Copyright 1997, Beth Blevins
May not be distributed or reprinted without permission of the author. Email: beblevins@aol.com

- Beth Blevins was: Anonymous, Tina Brown-Noes, Charminandra II, Hope Corn-Chip, Margarene Crisco, Persephone Demeter, Gene Diction, Bliss Frenzy, Bruce Messiah, Sylvia Plath (the last poem of), I. Reed Pound, Randi, Tray Sheik, Bobbie Shelley, A. Smith, Aenede Tenyure, etc.

- Nan Chase was Anita Menendez.

- Chandra Garsson was Mona Lott and Mona Little.

- Kim Kupperman was Diva Out, Babylon Slim, Carabina Slim., and the Virgin Mary

- Tom Parker was also Frances T. Parkins I

- David Rosenak was August Stubbs.

...AND YOU THOUGHT WE HAD A STAFF OF THOUSANDS!

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

- Charminandra has remarried and is living in a log cabin in northern California where she offers "spirit guide diet consulations" and holds weekly "community channeling" sessions at the local YMCA.

- Mona Lott-Little has divorced her drugstore cashier husband and so is Mona Lott again; she started a women's studies program at her local community college but was kicked off the faculty when she refused to admit men to her classes.

- Anita Menendez is working on Fantasy number 25.

- Hope Corn-Chip, seeing no future in the futuristic vision thing, is now working on a book about medieval France.

- Conceptual artist Margarene Crisco is continuing her "feminist Crisco" (laundry) project, having hung wet wash across Manhattan and the Grand Canyon. She is planning a daring project of washing reds and whites together in hot water (to signify both unity and the feminine principle), which she will hang where the Berlin wall once stood.

- August Stubbs is traveling the country with the Stubetts, a honky-tonk band backed by strippers.

- Persephone Demeter, former macrobiotic cook, myth therapist, andlesbian poetess, is the married mother of three children. She recently voted for her first Republican candidate. She lives in Virginia.