Like many precious things, Stone of Madness Press started as a bedroom project. Its inception in the summer of 2020 marked a mutual commitment to reading and sharing the artistics of writers who may not have felt comfortable in a traditional publishing landscape set against a pandemic backdrop. The major priority, and flexible framework, for this journal has remained consistent throughout its life so far: we want weird shit that doesn’t belong anywhere else, from beautiful people who don’t belong anywhere else.

Our mission statement is unchanged in regards to prioritizing queer, trans, and neurodiverse/Mad authors and artists. We have shifted over the years to being a genreless magazine to reflect this strangeness. We have been lucky to receive the help of volunteer editors, contest judges, and workshop instructors. Most significantly, though, we have now published almost seven hundred writers in a five year period. By many strokes of luck and distribution, we have also published dozens of creators from six of the seven continents…so if you’re stationed in Antarctica, hit us up.

Accessibility has always been key for ourselves and our authors. As Mad queer people, we’ve completed issues everywhere from the hospital to the highlights of our lives so far. This has always been an all-volunteer project, and we cannot thank the many contributors and submitters who have entrusted us to read their work enough. Over the past half decade, we have seen authors from earlier issues go on to land major book deals, win literary prizes and fellowships, and start their own presses, but the single most exciting email we receive to this day is, “This will be my first publication.”

We thank everyone who shares treasured work with us, but especially the queer/Mad elders who have returned to literature after a life of becoming to put themselves out there and capture their first byline. To our readers, submitters, contributors, distributors, and collaborators: we look up to you every day.

Stone of Madness Press gets its name from both the Hieronymous Bosch painting that hangs in the Prado, The Extraction of the Stone of Madness (c. 1494), and the legendary, Mad, queer poet Alejandra Pizarnik’s Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962-1972, published posthumously. There are several dedications to poets and friends we have lost from this earthly realm throughout our issues, and they are as important to the work as any writer.

Thank you for five years and thirty issues of the Madness. You are welcome here.

— L Scully & Olivia Braley, July 2025