Calgary teens run Exclamation Mark Literary Journal, and the editors want to be judged as professionals
The journal now prints four times a year and reaches 1,200 unique visitors a month online. Print copies are on sale at three Calgary bookstores.
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Print copies are on sale at Owl's Nest Books, Shelf Life Books and SanKtjuri Buks in Calgary, and at Audreys Books in Edmonton. The journal also appears at the offices of NoD Magazine at the University of Calgary and FreeFall Literary Society.
It began with a lunch-hour conversation in the cafeteria at Western Canada High School. Darren Yang and Erica McKinnon, then 16 and writers who loved to read, were talking about the magazines they liked and what they found lacking in literary magazines generally.
"We hadn't found one literary magazine that perfectly aligned with our own tastes," says Yang, who recently turned 17. "We thought, why not start one of our own?" Most literary journals, he says, favour beautiful, tranquil writing. Exclamation Mark was built to explore "the dark side of human experience, the ugly side."
The journal went online in February, with Yang, McKinnon and fellow high-schooler Devin Xiao publishing work from around the globe. It now publishes online four times a month and in print four times a year. An August print edition featured exclusively the work of disabled and chronically ill writers.
The three teenagers now lead a team of seven adult editors, including an American high school English teacher, two political science students from India and a student at the University of California, Berkeley.
The early days were slow. "At first, no one submitted to Exclamation Mark," Yang says. "So we posted on Instagram and Twitter and made funny reels that young people like." Followers came first, then submissions, up to 300 a month for the founding editors before volunteer readers and editors signed on.
Yang says the founders do not want the journal treated as a youth publication. "We don't want people to look down on us or be soft on us because we are young people," he says. "We have the same standards and are as professional as a real publication." Editors of FreeFall and NoD magazines gave him advice on running a literary magazine and printing an issue.
