“Turning words into art is unnatural. It begins with a contrary attitude. It says, I am unhappy with the way things are and desire to make things different. Rather than represent the world, I will make something wildly and savagely new. I will defy logic. I will invest in new perceptions. I will combine and recombine and fabricate and juggle until something that I have never experienced is experienced. The process is alchemical. The process is violent. It goes to the heart of creativity. It disrupts and shatters. It is splendid with provocation. It is an aggression against banality. It is sharp and loud like a janitor scraping frost from a window. The hectic bounce of steam on a street after a truck roars by. The anarchy of waters, the comedy of the face, dangerous feelings vented from a cage of skin.” ~ John Olson
Contrary Magazine
ISSN 1549-7038
Contrary® was founded in 2003 at the University of Chicago by students and alumni of Chicago’s Master of Arts Program in the Humanities. It was quickly embraced and has been abundantly nourished by graduates of the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing program. It now operates independently and without a thought of profit on the South Side of Chicago and publishes writers from throughout the world.
Editor
Jeff McMahon
Poetry Editor
Shaindel Beers
Fiction Editor
Frances Badgett
Design Consultant
Andrew von Engel
Editores Emeriti
David Alm, Blog Anchor
Shevi Berlinger, Associate Editor
Laura M. Browning, Associate Editor
Helday de la Cruz, Assistant Poetry Editor
Dana Dunham, Associate Editor
S.W. Flores, Assistant Fiction Editor
Cynthia Newberry Martin, Associate Editor, Review Editor
Patrick Sheehan, Associate Editor
Award-Winning Content in Contrary
2023 Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions: Dark Matter by Mandira Pattnaik
2020 Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions: After Hours by Heather De Bell
2018 Best of the Net: Rooms by Abby Minor
2018 Best of the Net: “Exactly 299,792,458 Meters Per Second”
by Carolee Bennett
Writer’s Digest 2018 Standout Market
Writer’s Digest, Top 50 Online Literary Magazines
2007 Million Writers Notable Story
On the Contrary
The first problem is the “Contrary” above the content. Why is it called Contrary, you might ask, when some of its content isn’t? We have a contemplation to confront this contradiction: we insist that all of our content is contrary. And, we insist, so is all of yours. Doesn’t it seem possible that all content is contrary, that there is no for, there is only against? Why else does the word contrary, so openly against something, have no antonym? What opposes contrary? Nothing. That which opposes contrary, by opposing, becomes contrary.
Besides, we tend to think contrarily, and we hope our magazine expresses contrarities that otherwise might go unexpressed: writings and images that confront entities, voids, and the edges of their own categories. As for that poetic nothing, the “Journal of Unpopular Discontent,” we conceal our dreams in the double negative, hoping to become a journal of popular content. (Spring 2003)