Clash Magazine: Issue #1

by Christoph Paul (Editor), Sam Pink, Leza Cantoral

CLASH Books presents Issue #1 of CLASH Magazine featuring some of the most talented writers working in the small press world today. CLASH brings together non-fiction, poetry, and fiction spanning different genres, perspectives, and unique voices including: Autumn Christian, Sam Pink, Daniel Knauf, Gabino Iglesias, Lisa Marie Basile, Stephanie Wytovich, Madeline Swann, Christoph Paul, Joanna C. Valente, Jayaprakash Satyamurthy, Danger Slater, Loren Kleinman, Charles Austin Muir, Ashley Inguanta, Brian Alan Ellis, Monique Quintana, Sam Richard, Stephanie Valente, Leza Cantoral, B. Diehl, Emily Paskevics, Maxwell Bauman, Kat Giordano, and Joel Amat Güell.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction

100 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 2018

About the author

Christoph Paul is an award-winning humor author. He writes non-fiction, YA, Bizarro, horror, and poetry including: The Passion of the Christoph, Great White House Volume 1 and Volume 2, Slasher Camp for Nerd Dorks, A Confederacy of Hot Dogs, and Horror Film Poems. He is the managing editor for CLASH Media and CLASH Books and edited the anthologies Walk Hand in Hand Into Extinction: Stories Inspired by True Detective and This Book Ain’t Nuttin to F*%k With: A Wu-Tang Tribute Anthology. Under the pen name Mandy De Sandra, he writes Bizarro Erotica that has been covered in VICE, Huffington Post, Jezebel, and AV Club.

Reviews

[Leo Robertson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I chatted with editor Leza Cantoral about this book and more on Losing the Plot—listen here!!

Excellent collection of well-written non-fiction, poetry and fiction!

Deftly covers a range of contemporary issues: race, politics, living in the age of technology. A suprisingly dense and insightful little book.

I enjoyed the pieces that were sincere in tone the most. I can't get enough sincerity, and I suspect many of these writers would say the same. I connect less with the nihilistic vibe that's typical of Vice and similar publishers.

But whatever. When I buy interesting things from all over, I don't anticipate that they've cornered the "Scottish process engineers living in Norway" market. Surely no one else will mind :D

And derespectivagardless, I'll definitely keep buying CLASH magazine!

[Bab · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice little collection of works. The non-fiction part is consistently awesome, I didn't particularly love the poetry section (except for the excellent 'This Tender Thing') and some of the fiction stories are quite nice (though I believe 'The Anarchist Kosher Cookbook' actually belonged in non-fiction;).
Great, interesting writing throughout. And for a snippet, mark these strictly non-fiction words: "let's Fahrenheit 451 Goodreads"!!!

[Paige Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 Clash always has cute cartoony covers and cool concepts, but typically dull execution. The pieces are quick and there’s always at least one line that’s funny or has good imagery like guppies of ghosts or fresh cut roses relating to religion. But the topics of Twitter, Christianity, and being a modern writer don’t have much to plum from in general in terms of entertainment value, especially when you only get a handful of pages of mostly non-fiction. Or many stories on these topics saying the same thing that’s trite in general.

It’s cringey how most pieces straight up point out they’re leftist like we didn’t know or they say social media and racism are bad, which is about as thoughtful as going “murder: no good.” Anecdotes of unique moments in the writers lives woulda been waaay better. Like the scrapbook framing was unique.

This would’ve come across so much better if they did the poetry first, which was often light & pop culturey, then the fiction which had political tones w/ #MeToo and such, then the nonfiction as you’d be eased in to the choir preaching and know there’s variety besides the medium here before you give up, which I almost did multiple times.

Still, the stories with Freakazoids and LED flower crowns had compelling urgency. I’m still giving Girl Like a Bomb a go since I follow Autumn’s Substack.

[Bmac · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bought this for the Sam Pink

Kindle edition has an insane amount of typos.