Catatonic Daughters: The Ins and Outs of Starting Your Own Literary Magazine
Anna Royle
Ríbh Brownlee, a BA English graduate from Queen’s University Belfast, is currently studying an MA in Publishing at University College London. She is Editor in Chief of her own literary magazine, Catatonic Daughters, which released its second issue on 31 January 2022.
Catatonic Daughters is a digital literary magazine founded in 2021. The magazine publishes poetry, prose, script, and creative non-fiction that encapsulates the idea of the strange woman. Brownlee says the theme is about “women that resist fitting within shallow constraints of normality and lean instead into their unusual impulses, desires, attitudes, and relationships. There’s something compelling about subversive women, so we wanted to create a space to bring all of the strange women literature together.”
Brownlee suggests that research is necessary before starting your own magazine. “One of the best things I did before starting CD was getting to grips with the litmag process, so volunteering as a reader for a litmag or applying for a team position can be really beneficial to help you learn the ropes and discover what you’d specifically like to do.”
The initial idea for Catatonic Daughters came from Brownlee’s experience as the President of Queen’s Writers’ Society in 2020/21. “That year’s committee started up The Apiary magazine and managed to publish two brilliant issues. Bringing writers together was an experience that I really loved, and made me want to start something of my own after I graduated.”
While The Apiary is a print magazine, Catatonic Daughters stuck with a digital format. This meant less pressure with finding printers and retailers while the magazine was getting established. It also means the only cost is the website hosting. Despite the benefits of the digital format, Catatonic Daughters does not charge for submissions, and therefore the magazine operates on a net loss.
Catatonic Daughters started off as a solo project, but for the most recent issue, Brownlee welcomed a team of six volunteer readers to give initial feedback on the submissions, which enabled all 178 pieces of writing submitted to Issue Two to be judged from different perspectives.
“I do read everything that comes into our inbox. Some pieces are an immediate yes or an immediate no, but second opinions are so valuable for the in-between pieces, especially for ones that require a lot of thought on how they fit within the overarching theme of CD. Submissions tend to open whenever we have the time to dedicate to reading through everything, such during Christmas breaks and summer holidays.”
Brownlee created a roadmap of where she wanted the magazine to go from the start, explaining that the contributors have very generously allowed the use of their words and art to design merchandise that has helped to recuperate the website hosting fees for the first year.
“Hopefully the next batch of merch will let us pay our contributors for their work! I’d like to eventually make CD a print magazine but it’s important to me that it stays accessible and free to read, so the PDF will be hosted on our website for free three months after publication.”
To support Catatonic Daughters, check out their Redbubble shop and keep an eye out for some brand-new merch related to the new issue. You can read both issue one and two on their website, and find them on Instagram and Twitter.
Anna Royle is deputy culture editor at The Scoop and is an English with Creative Writing student at Queen’s University Belfast