Volume 10’s cover, courtesy of Main Squeeze. Cover art by Bee Baxter.
This year, Main Squeeze Literary Magazine released its 10th consecutive edition. The literary magazine is owned and operated by SOU students, in a class called “Beyond the Workshop” (Creative Writing 420, class registration number 3988), and has published volumes of Main Squeeze since 2015. The magazine’s management is composed entirely of students, who are tasked with soliciting and sorting through submissions from writers all over the world. Submissions are open to students, too, and more than a handful of up-and-coming writers ended up in this year’s selection. The opportunity is valuable for anyone looking to build their resume while in college. For example, in addition to being one of the Fiction Editors in the 2025 year, I’ve published four pieces of fiction and poetry in Main Squeeze while at SOU.
The new volume has been up for awhile, but Thursday, April seventeenth was the official Main Squeeze Volume 10 launch date, featuring “a wrestler’s quest for redemption, a terrifying yet beautiful ceramic mask, BREASTS!, queer love, dead deer, giant foreheads, Ben Shapiro’s struggles at the grocery store, a fever dream about Nicholas Cage, bees (unrelated), and so much more.” Main Squeeze has always had a knack for the weird. It’s always sought out pieces that tried to be cutting edge and experimental with language and form. Taking risks in writing doesn’t always work, but it’s a sure bet to get published if it’s done right. And Main Squeeze will be back with Volume 11 next year, with the call for submissions open in January.
“It was a privilege to work on Volume 10 of Main Squeeze,” Editor-in-Chief Desiree Remick told me. “We received a number of truly excellent submissions from SOU students and from the writing community at large. I look forward to reading next year’s issue as well!”
Fifty three submissions total were accepted, out of a pool of hundreds. While students had no small number of acceptances, we published pieces from all over the world, including fiction, poetry, and art, with poetry making up the lion’s share of what we eventually accepted. The class was unique, and a must-take for anyone interested in professionally writing and publishing. It’s generally a project for senior year, the culmination of the University’s Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing.
For me, taking the class required a lot of thought. I’ve been writing for awhile, but finding what was good and not good in other people’s writing was a whole different animal. It took a lot of careful scrutiny, a lot of reading, a lot of note-taking, and most importantly a lot of studying my own biases. In the end, we only published a handful of fiction pieces (which made up the minority of pieces we received to begin with), after much careful examination and wrangling with writers about changes we wanted to make to their manuscripts. The experience was good for a lot of reasons, but I think what was most valuable was it gave me a window into what being a publisher on the hunt for manuscripts actually looks like.
Beyond the Workshop is available every winter term. There are four prerequisite classes, and junior standing is required. You can read Main Squeeze Volume 10 here, but unfortunately, due to the rising costs associated with print there are no print copies available.
