Fence Magazine, Incorporated

Fence needs your help.

We are an independent publisher of poetry, fiction, art and criticism, founded in 1998 with a mission to publish challenging writing and art distinguished by idiosyncrasy and intelligence rather than by allegiance to camps, schools, or cliques. Fence Books has been a first publisher for the likes of Ottessa Moshfegh and Ariana Reines and through our magazine Fence, an early publisher of Wells Tower and Anne Carson. We also produce a set of digital imprints, Fence Digital, the Constant Critic, Elecment, and most recently Steaming.

Ottessa Moshfegh recently said of Fence: I think it's crucial to humanity to preserve the integrity of the creative process, to buck the strains and pressures of capitalism. Culture needs innovation. We all depend on those whose mission it is to protect the value of art and literature that innovates. I want to support those individual artists who are moving outside the status quo. Fence is rigorous in its selection of excellent work by writers outside the mainstream. I believe in non-conformity, so I believe in Fence.

In March, Fence staffed a table at the Associated Writing Programs conference, where we usually meet at least a hundred new subscribers in person. Because of the looming threat of coronavirus, the conference was sparsely attended. That same weekend, our editor received the below email from Publisher Relations at ANC, the periodicals distributor that handles Fence for Ingram.

You can read it here but it says that any shipments in the ANC warehouse that were headed for Barnes and Noble stores are to be marked "returned for credit" and destroyed. This means that the copies of our new issue, Fence 36, that were allotted to Barnes and Nobles around the country were put on a conveyor belt and fed to a shredder. We were told ANC could "not afford" to store the copies or ship the copies back and that the charges would be made to our account. 

As a non-profit, Fence is mandated to make decisions outside of the requirements of market force or capital concern, and these (substantial) charges in addition to the sunk costs associated with our AWP appearance pose an existential threat. Today we’re mounting a campaign to gather new support to help the magazine weather this strange and unpredictable storm. All Fence wants is readers for its contributors. Please be one of those supporters now.

Longtime contributor to Fence, poet Wayne Koestenbaum: A whole neighborhood in my id is populated by Fence: its streets are where I learned how to sound like myself, and where I learned to love the sounds that other experimental souls made when they were being candid, when they were being true to their own sublime uncontainability.

You can help by donating what you can afford here - anything and everything helps – or supporting Fence through a membership or subscription. Every donation of over $250 will receive a copy of Natalie Diaz’s POST COLONIAL LOVE POEM from Graywolf Press, longtime supporters of and members of the Fence family.  Thanks to a generous grant from the Whiting Foundation Literary Magazine Prize, donations received will be matched to a total of $10,000.