Editor’s Column: October 2025

When I picked all the themes for this year last fall, I was excited to do a sci-fi Suspect Press takeover, and I knew that with our current political climate, the theme Can We Get a New Timeline Please? would be appropriate. Unfortunately, if you had told me exactly how appropriate, and shared some of the stories behind the dystopian goings-on of 2025, I wouldn’t have believed it. 

Some might say that reading dystopian or dark fiction when times are tough is just depressive wallowing, but I disagree. Much like the corners of our community that create art through drag, fashion, makeup, music, or visual art, creating fiction and poetry about the trials and tribulations of our reality can be a great way to process and make sense of an unfair world. 

Impending societal collapse has never stopped us from serving looks, so in addition to the insightful content, get inspired by the dystopian warrior vibes of our cover shoot set at Denver’s very own post-apocalyptic paradise, Seventh Circle. 

Times may be beyond dark and tough, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still make art about it and through it. Join us in humoring our dark sides and taking a walk through the bleakest, most revealing corners of our imagination.

–Addison Herron-Wheeler

“The world is full of painful stories. Sometimes it seems as though there aren’t any other kind and yet I found myself thinking how beautiful that glint of water was through the trees.”

― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower