Letter from the Staff / 10th Anniversary

Drunk Monkeys in February of 2012

For the first few years of Drunk Monkeys, the site looked pretty much like the image above: essentially a modified Blogger site filled with poems and short stories, most of them from friends and family I had known for years, some of them professional writers, but most of them not. It was a really rickety hodge-podge of neo-beat messiness, humor essays, and Community recaps. I loved it so, so much. 

In those early years, I spent every minute of every day on the site: writing for it, designing and redesigning it a million times over, reading submissions, dealing with writers, and planning the future. It was my world, and I hoped, a full-time profession. But Mama, don’t let your babies grow up to start lit mags. There’s nothing but heartbreak and frustration in trying to make this a career. But there’s an entire world to be found in making this a community. 

As soon as I began working with an actual staff, writers and editors who could make frequent contributions, my inner conception of Drunk Monkeys changed. I still wanted to put out the best art we could find, but I cared more about the relationships I made as I was doing it. Soon Drunk Monkeys wasn’t just scrolling emails and dealing with WordPress, it was phone calls with Pam Langley-Ramos, it was Skype sessions with Natasha Narkiewicz, it was late night texts with Gabe Ricard, it was Kevin Ridgeway reading poetry at Gatsby Books, it was drinking with Bud Smith in Manhattan, it was talking Star Wars with Donald McCarthy, it was Nate Maxson grabbing a piece of cake and walking completely out of the store after he’d finished his set at the Kleft Jaw showdown, it was podcasts with Lawrence and Ryan, it was Allan’s incredible cover designs. Drunk Monkeys was the shy smile of Nathan Alan Schwartz and the huge laugh of Lise Quintana and the big brain of Bill Lessard and the beautiful soul of Alex Schumacher and the fearless spirit of Sean Woodard. It was Ashley and Seth, Rachel, Sam, Thomas, Tegan, Erin, Dani, Nate and Nate, Brian, Jess, Gessy and Claudia, Steve, Janey, Miriam, Ally and John, Joey the Birb, Aaron, William, and dozens of others. 

It was also, often, overwhelming. 

In 2016, I reached out to Kolleen to be our Social Media Coordinator, based on the amazing job she was doing for Lise Quintana’s Zoetic Press. Her energy and personality changed the way we interacted with readers. When she moved to California, we started having frequent meetings with Nathan Alan Schwartz, a member of the DM staff and also EIC of Five 2 One Magazine, at a Barnes & Noble near us. Having a group of staff members with in-person meetings made me feel more energized and optimistic about the site than I had been in years. And then 2016 just wore on, and the world got uglier, crueler beyond imagining. I absorbed too much of it. I was tired, and I thought, maybe done. The next time I met up with Kolleen and Nathan, I told them I was closing down the site. But the obvious solution, and really a question I had been wanting to ask for a while at that point, was right there in front of us. So in January of 2017, Kolleen took over as Editor-in-chief. 

The night the site went live, at midnight on 11/11/11, I posted the Arcade Fire song “Ready to Start,” and a link to the site, on Facebook. Not a single person liked the post. Today we have over 4,000 followers on Twitter, and receive thousands of visitors per month to the site. And that’s all Kolleen. Every single day, she’s out there on social media, fighting the good fight and keeping this miserable lit community honest. I don’t know how she does any of it, but I suspect it’s the same way every woman does it: they’re inherently stronger, tougher, and wiser than the men around them. 

With Kolleen in charge, Drunk Monkeys has become a success I could never have managed. The following year, Chris Pruitt came aboard, and I can’t say enough about what a stabilizing factor his hard work has been for the magazine. If you’ve read a Drunk Monkeys post in the past four years, it’s likely that Chris is the one who formatted it. Soon, every month we were getting together for formatting sessions/bitch sessions/Vanderpump Rules viewing sessions at Kolleen’s house. The pandemic interrupted that a bit, so now we mostly bash everything out while moving that in-person bitch session to a group text chain. 

Kolleen, Chris, and Matt prepare the first annual Pop Culture issue, “It’s Not About the Pasta.”

What Drunk Monkeys will become I can’t say. It certainly didn’t last ten years because I willed it to, but because it became something important to people other than myself. In that way, it really is like my child: I raised it as best I could and now it’s shaped and driven by influences beyond me. I’m just happy to see it grow, and thank you to everyone who helped. 

Matt Guerrero, Founding Editor 

Welcome to our gigantic anniversary issue! It’s huge! 

I’ve been thinking about what to write and it’s been a bit hard. I haven’t been with Drunk Monkeys for ten years. I met founder Matt Guerrero at AWP in spring of 2016, and he asked me to run the social media accounts; I happily agreed. Soon after I moved to Los Angeles Matt considered closing up shop, and I suggested I take over for a bit to give him a break. That was in 2017, and I’ve been here ever since, with Matt taking a behind-the-scenes role. 

I like to think that we’ve built an honest to god family in Drunk Monkeys. Sean Woodard was writing for us by then I think, and we took Chris Pruitt on board as Managing Editor in 2018. We have our poetry and fiction editors (hello, Joey! Jeanne! Ashley! Ramona! Hello!), and our staff writers (hello Zora! Hello Gabe! Hello Alex even though you’ve moved on to greener pastures!), and they are everything to me. But the Chris/Matt/Sean Turbo Team are sort of the unsung heroes in the sense that they are responsible for all of the behind the scenes journal building. Like, I can accept a poem easily, but I’ll be fucked if I know how to get it onto the website properly. Real Malibu Stacey vibes over here. They are my brothers, and I love them to death. 

I am proud of what we do and have done at Drunk Monkeys. I think we put out some quality shit, even if a lot of people do have to wait up to a year to show up on the site (thank you for your patience, dear contributors). We have a rad podcast (Twin Peaks Logcasting, look it up!). We try to call out shit behavior and make the lit world a little more comfortable and vibrant. We live for our April Pop Culture issue. We love Vanderpump Rules. We’re everything you would ever need in a literary journal, except the ability to pay. 

So it’s been ten years but for me it’s been almost 6 and you know, it’s been the best 6 years of my life. I don’t know what the future holds, if we’ll be around for another ten years, but whatever happens thank you for being here, for reading us, for submitting to us. I am so, so happy. I love this, and I love all of you.

Kolleen Carney-Hoepfner, Editor-in-chief

Dear Readers, Contributors, Friends, 

I'll be brief, because this issue is already a colossal cartoon pancake stack of words, pictures, sounds and their various intersections, and you're no doubt eager to dig in. As you should be!

The last two years or so have been a well-documented national and global nightmare, and I'm far from unique or notable in having struggled to focus on my work as a writer as I wish to. Even so, and maybe especially as a result, I have cherished the work and the community that being an editor for Drunk Monkeys has brought me. Getting to contribute in my small way to platforming the authors and pieces we host here, and getting to remain a productive part of the lit community even when I've struggled to find the words, has been absolutely invaluable for my sense of well being through various mental health struggles, endless quarantine, challenging remote work situations, and several unrelated family emergencies.

All I have to offer in return is thanks. Thanks to those of you who read this site. Thanks to those of you who do the good work of writing and making art, and for trusting us to champion it for you. Thank you to my fellow staffers, most frequently Kollen, Matt, and Sean, but to all of you, for making this little bit of extra work in an overwhelming world a joy.

Happy anniversary, Drunk Monkeys. I hope all of you out there in Internet Land enjoy this publication as much as I do.

Chris Pruitt, Managing Editor 

It’s hard to believe that Drunk Monkeys is celebrating its 10th anniversary. Come January of 2022, I’ll have been with the magazine for six years. I was halfway through my second year of grad school at Chapman University when I answered then film editor Dani Neiley’s call for film reviewers. At the time, I was looking to build connections and improve my writing, so I sent in some samples. Soon after I began publishing 100-word film reviews for Drunk Monkeys. But it wasn’t until I attended the 2016 Association of Writers and Poets conference in Los Angeles and met Founding Editor Matt Guerrero that I felt like I was a part of something. Something good.

Since then, I’ve contributed semi-regular film columns (Once Upon a Time in Film Scoring and Finding the Sacred Among the Profane), assumed the role of Film Editor, and become close friends with the whole Drunk Monkeys family.

Kolleen, Matt, Chris, and the rest of the crew have poured their hearts into building this publication to where it is today. But what makes it all worthwhile is being able to showcase phenomenal work that is submitted to us by equally phenomenal writers each month. Just looking at the Film Section, there’s something comforting in seeing Gabriel Ricard’s informative Captain Canada’s Movie Rodeo or Zora Satchell’s fascinating takes on short films in Zora’s Super Short Show. But it’s always a pleasure to read all the other film essays we showcase on the site. When a good piece catches your attention when you’re bleary-eyed and scrolling through the Submittable queue, you can’t wait to hit “Accept” and later share that piece with the rest of the world.

I think what I’m most grateful for is how Drunk Monkeys provides a wonderful platform to be in communion with other writers and readers—that we extend the invitation to others to join us in this close-knit, but ever-growing, family of ours.

I look forward to seeing how Drunk Monkeys will grow in the future and continue championing work that reminds us that the best thing about any kind of art is that it brings people together. I cherish the memories I have made here, and I will proudly continue serving as its Film Editor, until such time I feel it appropriate to pass the torch on to a worthy successor.

Thanks to everyone—editors, staff writers, contributors, supporters, readers—for making Drunk Monkeys my home.

Love,

Sean Woodard, Film Editor