Monthly Archives: June 2017

Editor’s Note: Happy Pride! And why I think love stories with happy endings are important.

Today is the pride parade here in Toronto. To those celebrating and participating, I hope you had fun and that the thunderstorms we had didn’t put a damper on the day. Love is love is love. It doesn’t matter in what shape it arrives.

Today is also the second week that T.R.O.U. has been live and I’ve already made a couple minor changes to the submissions guidelines. I was talking with a friend about the magazine and how exciting it was to create a positive space for people and he asked me a couple of interesting questions. The first is if the magazine accepts writing by young writers. Yes! Of course we do! Love has no age limit.

The second question was why I thought it was so important  to have everything I published here have a happy ending. The main reason was because I wanted to create a positive space, a space that shows everyone can find happiness, just as you are. That we can fall in love, and experience a great relationship even if we haven’t reached (and may never reach) societal’s restrictive standards of who deserves happiness.

After thinking about our conversation for a few days I realized that perhaps this caveat was too restrictive and might limit the awesome writing you lovelies have waiting in your back pockets. So I have updated the submissions guidelines to be happy endings preferred. Ambiguous ending are cool, and perhaps things don’t end well, but it would be great if your piece can illustrate how it was a positive learning experience. The key is positivity. I believe we can change society, one love story at a time. Perhaps this seems syrupy and idealistic, but, I believe it’s true. We can choose to live life fully, despite what the haters might say. #AcceptanceThroughRepresentation

I’m looking forward to checking out all of your pieces! Send those love stories, poems, or essays my way!

Welcome to The Rest Of Us. So happy to see you.

I hope that this is the start of something exciting. T.R.O.U. is an idea born out of my study of the body positive movement, where I saw that changes in how we feel about one another can be made through being exposed to people and things we might not understand. I don’t know about you, but, I never had a role model on television or in movies that I could really relate to.

Part of my research into body love showed me that when we don’t see ourselves in the media, we don’t know what possibilities are out there for us. Living a happy, good, fulfilling life seems to be a monumental task. I know that this isn’t really ground breaking news, I’ve read that lack of representation is a problem several times. But instead of just reading about how it is a problem, I decided to try and create a solution. So The Rest Of Us Lit. Mag. came to be.

The mission of this magazine is simple. Inclusive, intersectional, love stories for humans. Just like everyday love, the stories can come in different forms including essays, poems, short stories, flash fiction, or something else created through words not listed here. We want to see ourselves in relationships and in love. T.R.O.U. is providing a platform to collect those stories and share them with others. If you have one you’d like to share please follow the instructions on the submit page to send it in for consideration.

I strongly believe in Acceptance Through Representation. We learn to understand and accept things we are unsure of when we read about them and are exposed to those things that seem foreign or different. For more information about this magazine please check out the about page.

This magazine aims to be entertaining, heart warming, and provide a place for acceptance, and positivity in this overly negative world. We also aim to pay our contributors, so if you’re so inclined, please visit our funds page to be a part of our KickStarter.

Thanks for stopping by, hope to see you again soon!

 

[Description of image: The Rest of Us logo. A grey back ground with a red circle around the letters T.R.O.U. written in black in the centre. Below is a sketch in black of an anatomically inspired heart with lines radiating around it. Underneath the heart is the written in black is The Rest of Us Lit. Mag.]