Spiral Tower Press is an amateur ("for the love of it") press as well as a literary and fan community. We currently publish two free and open access amateur magazines, Whetstone: Amateur Magazine of Sword and Sorcery and Witch House: Amateur Magazine of Cosmic Horror. We have planned for some time to publish a third amateur magazine, Way Station: Amateur Magazine of Space Opera.
Spiral Tower Press was founded by Jason Ray Carney, Ph.D., an English Professor who teaches popular literature, the history of literary criticism, and literary theory at Christopher Newport University, a small liberal arts college in Hampton Roads, Virginia.
Why did Carney found Spiral Tower Press? After discussing being a professional genre fiction writer with several aspiring and veteran authors, a pattern emerged: contemporary genre fiction needs a robust amateur zine culture for fans and critics to create and share their work. In the past, zines were quite prevalent, circulated in print among fans, and served as training grounds for new generations of writers. As years progressed, these zines were replaced by more ephemeral digital forms. Carney wanted to provide amateur writers an opportunity to work with editors and connect to readers. The idea was to combine the format of a print zine with the shareability of digital forms. Thus, Spiral Tower Press was born.
What else does Spiral Tower Press do?
SpiralCon: We host a free one-day event called SpiralCon, a quasi-academic convention celebrating sword and sorcery, cosmic horror, and space opera. SpiralCon has been held twice (2022 and 2023) and takes place on the campus of Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia, in July.
Trigon Awards: Spiral Tower Press organizes and presents The Trigon Awards, three achievement awards for literary, scholarly, and special achievements. The Trigon Award are presented at SpiralCon.
Spiral Tower Reviews: We welcome long-form reviews of new indie genre fiction. Several writers have published insightful reviews using this venue.
TRIAPA: Spiral Tower Press hosts an amateur press association, TRIAPA, encouraging participants to contribute independently produced zines to a central editor. Previous mailings can be located here.
Discord Servers: We host two Discord servers, 'The Whetstone Tavern' for discussions on sword and sorcery, and 'The Witch House Parlor' for cosmic horror discussions.
Spiral Tower Press is looking for volunteers. Are you interested in helping with any of these endeavors. We need readers for our zines, organizing help for our convention, reviewers for Spiral Tower Reviews, and more. Contact us as spiraltowerpress@gmail.com
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