Welcome to Banksia Journal, an online magazine of short stories in fantasy, science fiction, horror, and beyond.
Home
On our home page, Banksia Journal claims to be a magazine. But, as may be evident from the screen you are reading on, it is not a glossy booklet sold at a newsstand. Then again, if you have visited the websites of, say, National Geographic, or Marie Claire recently, they are clearly not defined solely by their print format either. So, what makes a magazine?
Writing in 2014, Megan Le Masurier had a few ideas. Among other features, she says magazines have an editorial philosophy, and they are serial publications.
Editorial philosophy
A magazine’s editorial philosophy is, put simply, the collection of ideas behind what it publishes. For example, according to publisher Are Media, the popular Better Homes and Gardens is about “sparkling creativity in every home and garden through trusted voices, practical solutions and ideas that bring joy”, while Woman’s Day “is the absolute authority on Australian and international celebrities. From cover to cover, [Woman’s Day] takes readers inside the stars’ lives—the good, the bad and the ugly.” Looking more specifically at literary journals, Liminal “is an anti-racist literary platform, publishing art, writing, interviews & more.” It has “a focus on the Asian Australian experience.”
At Banksia Journal we publish—our tag line says—new Aussie spec fic. That is, short fantasy, science fiction, and horror stories by authors and for readers in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. And, as we say on our home page, “We aim to be that foot-in-the-door for emerging Australasian writers” and publish work by new writers.
Banksia Journal is an online publication for emerging Australian voices in speculative fiction, a sadly underrepresented genre in the Australian publishing industry. Australian speculative fiction readers and writers are often left on the outside, submitting to and reading journals made for a foreign audience.
About Us
One of the obvious ways our Australasian speculative fiction editorial philosophy is realised is by publishing speculative stories specifically set in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. For example, “‘Cthulhu meets The Castle’—How a Bunbury fish and chip shop found international fame from an unexpected guest” is set in, well, Bunbury, Western Australia.
Perhaps less obvious are our submission guidelines. Because we want new writers submitting to us, Lauren and I aimed to write submission guidelines clear and comprehensive enough that someone who had never submitted a piece of writing anywhere before would have no trouble following them. We have had a few writers, such as H. J. Bogue, publish their first short stories with us, so I can only hope that means we succeeded.
The editorial philosophy is intimately connected to a vision about subject matter, voice, style, readers, market niche, format, and design.
Le Masurier (2014)
Editorial philosophy is not just about the words published, though. It also, as Le Masurier says, encompasses style, design, the way everything is presented and to whom.
Writing in 2012, this is one of the reasons Le Masurier identified that editors may prefer their magazine be published in print rather than online: the fixed layout of a print magazine gives much more control over design and layout. Unlike a print publication, readers of Banksia Journal do not all see the same thing: are you currently reading this on a small, portrait phone screen, or a large, landscape laptop screen? Are you viewing the website in light or dark mode? There is a good chance you are seeing something different to me (I’m currently on a laptop in light mode). This has, in fact, caused problems in the past. I will make sure something displays properly in dark mode, only to find I ruined the appearance in light mode!
Of course, I still have a great deal of control over Banksia Journal’s appearance, and I have in the past written about the design process. Aesthetically, Lauren and I wanted to lean in to Banksia Journal being an Australian speculative fiction publication, and we decided to do so by covering it in Australian flora, right down to the name and logo.
Above are just a few images with Australian plants you may see around the site. It is perhaps ironic how little Australian floral imagery I am using in this piece.
Serial publication
When I say magazines are serial, I mean something finite is published on a regular, fixed schedule. Things do get a bit blurry here. The print edition of tech magazine Wired is currently published every two months—each edition is finite, and new editions are regularly released on a fixed schedule. But if you visit the website, Wired has a seemingly constant stream of articles with multiple new ones published each day. I suppose “constantly” can be considered a regular schedule, but the content only seems finite if you are browsing without a subscription and get paywalled out.
The print edition of Wired can readily be called a magazine, but can the website? But then, if you buy a subscription to the print edition you also gain access to the online one, so can Wired the print magazine and Wired the online maybe, maybe not magazine be separated?
Something similar could be said of, for example, Australian literary journal Overland. There is a quarterly print edition, then there is a website which appears to publish a new article every few days. In contrast, Australian speculative fiction publication AntipodeanSF does not have a print edition, but the website is updated with a finite collection of stories once a month.
the wait is important. When things happen at regular intervals, we can anticipate and savour them … Once everything is accessible at any time … there’s no anticipation
Rutter (2013) in Le Masurier (2014)
While Le Masurier acknowledges this blurry boundary, she still believes serial publication is an important feature in defining magazines. They are published and read in a “mid-frequency temporality” which allows time to complete and then reflect on one edition before moving on to the next. This is a different experience to most of the internet which is constantly updating and so can never be completed. It does not leave time to stop and reflect. This can leave users with a sense of ennui.
It is also different from reading slower paced books. A book typically takes longer to read, but when it’s finished, it’s finished. Either that, or it is part of a series with a much slower release schedule to that of a magazine (I have been waiting for the next of Tamsyn Muir’s Locked Tomb series since 2022). The irregularity of books has a very different ramp of anticipation to the regularity of magazines.
Is it fair to call Banksia Journal a serial publication? We do not publish a bundle of stories at a time like AntipodeanSF, or a typical print magazine. Nor do we publish in an unending stream like Wired, or a daily news website. I personally think Banksia Journal falls into the “mid-frequency temporality” described by Le Masurier; each story we publish stands as a finite text, and there are regular breaks between publication (give or take) which (I certainly hope) allows time for reflection and anticipation of the next story. So, I think Banksia Journal can be called a magazine.
But what do you think? How would you define a magazine, and do you think Banksia Journal counts?
Brittany Lee is the co-founder, and editor of Banksia Journal. She is a writer from Perth, Western Australia, with a BA in Linguistics, and Postgrad Diploma in Journalism. Her work has appeared in AntipodeanSF, Dusty Attic Publishing, and Perth’s Raine Square Story Dispenser. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, knitting, and taking photos of flowers (such as banksias).
You can find her online at brittanyerinlee.com.