Welcome back, everyone! We hope you missed us.

After graduating two seniors last year, we’ve spent the past month and a half reviewing council applications and making plans for the 2018-2019 year. Now, with the addition of four new baby snakes (profiles to come), The Laughing Medusa 2018-2019 council is up and running!

To kick off the year, we collaborated with Boston College’s spoken word group, SLAM! (Soul, Love, and Music), for a night of poetry and prose readings at the McMullen Museum of Art. With the room filled with the smell of hot coffee and baked delicacies, members of each group performed at will, showering us with poems and pieces about love and life and hurt and hate. Despite the rainy weather, the atrium of the museum was filled with students there to perform, support their friends, and listen to what their fellow peers had to say. Snaps were heard all around in response to beautiful and powerful lines woven from experiences pulled from the full spectrum of human emotion, including abuse, racism, misogyny, ignorance, and heartache.

Miya Coleman, president of SLAM!, and Taylor Puccini, our very own editor-in-chief, both did an incredible job performing their own works while also facilitating the entire event and encouraging the audience to to speak their minds.

Now, we’re directing our attention towards the Fall 2018 Zine. For those who aren’t familiar with a “zine,” it’s a small-circulation self-published work of original or appropriated texts and images, usually reproduced via photocopier. Though we don’t make it using a photocopier, our version is much like the aforementioned definition: a collection of original texts and images fit into a mini-magazine. Every year The Laughing Medusa zine has a different theme and title to fit the content we’ve received; in the past, we’ve swapped out the word “Laughing” for “Seething,” “Musing,” and “Biting.” We can’t wait to see what the zine will become this year, but we need YOUR work to make this happen. Submissions are due November 26.

With the promise of more poetry readings, events filled with spoken word and baked goods, and (as always) empowered female company, we could not be more excited to see your words, scribblings, doodles, rants, art, and other creative work this year!