Dear Readers,

Issue 1 is finally here!

It’s been incredibly fulfilling to spend the last four months taking Jelly Squid from where it started – as merely an idea – to having a complete issue full of incredible work to share with you. We’ve been overjoyed to have the privilege of publishing work that is varied, bold, and unique – there’s a lot within this issue to get sucked into. Now that we’ve been sitting with striking details and vivid images from our featured artists throughout the past few months, it’s time for you to do the same. We hope you will immerse yourselves in these pieces and allow them to stay with you. Everything about this inaugural issue – from the experience of putting it together to the work it includes – will stick with us forever.

When considering the theme of this first issue, we wanted to choose something that represented our feelings about this project, and that also represented our feelings towards our experience as writers. This is something we struggled with for some time. The state of things feels dire – the weight of every day feels dire – hopelessness is popular, and understandably so. Tomorrow is not a guarantee. In the face of this, writing and art-making can feel pointless. It’s easy to get lost in wondering what the purpose of making anything is, or to feel selfish for making things when it feels as though one’s creative work has no way of helping those who suffer.

We believe that desire and ambition are not a reflection of selfishness. To want something – even something just for yourself – is to believe that there is still time. To desire – to have an aim, a want, a goal, a dream – is to believe, even just subconsciously, that there’s a chance we’ll survive the circumstances. That there’s a light at the end of the tunnel – and maybe more tunnels and lights beyond that. This is why we chose desire & ambition as our theme for this issue; we wanted to encourage you to want something. To believe in something – even if only your own desire.

Jelly Squid is purely a labor of love. Our goal is not profit nor popularity, not acclaim nor admiration; we simply believe that making things and sharing them with others is a crucial act of survival. Not only survival, but hope; every time one person takes the time to make something, to take an idea from the mind and the heart into reality, we all become stronger. To hope for something – desire something – is a lonely task. Our goal is to make things a little less lonely – to weave together individual acts of hope into the biggest, greatest tapestry we can. To, stitch by stitch, remind all of you – and ourselves – that all hope is not lost.

To all of our wonderful contributors: thank you endlessly for sharing your work with us. This is all possible because of your artistic endeavors – it’s no easy task getting art from the mind into reality. We’re infinitely grateful that you chose us to be a home for your work.

To those who embark on the journey of reading Issue 1: thank you for being here. We hope you enjoy this issue – and we can’t wait to share our plans for the next one.


– Mo Buckley Brown and Anya Jane Perez