Who is the Slag Glass City?
EDITOR: Barrie Jean Borich
ASSISTANT EDITOR: Hannah Rutkowski
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT: Eliana Herman
EDITORIAL INTERN: Zach Sharp
MANAGING EDITOR: Audrey Juergens
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Michelle Janssens Keller, Tim Hillegonds, Jen Soriano
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What is the SLAG GLASS CITY?
Slag is a waste product of iron ore processing and a leftover of the steel industry that once dominated the city and surrounding areas of American industrial centers such as Chicago, where this journal originates.
Slag glass is opaque and decorative; the streaks of color are said to have once been the result of adding slag to molten glass, though this part of the description may be urban legend. The origins of slag glass as a decorative arts material are murky and speculative, but the end product is a beautiful and utilitarian image of nonfiction art that comes from, and speaks to, the post-industrial city.
Skylines are made of glass; cities are at once dense, cooperative, tense, tragic and hopeful; urban space is contested territory. Slag is also a pejorative for the sexually unbound woman, but in the Slag Glass City we aim to transform margins into centers, and in doing so hope she will speak and act as she pleases. We are a journal that melds the old and the new, the accident and the plan, the rubble and the green, the rooftop and the prairie, the imaginative and the corporeal, the broken and the restored.
Our area of concern is the livable city, but our interpretation of this language, more familiar to urban planners, geographers, and city theorists than to artists, is multifaceted. We are interested in post-industrial greening of urban spaces—from rooftop gardens to elevated bike trails to vertical farms—but we are equally enthralled by interrogative art and performance that values social justice and queerness, reinvents form, and honors the green human need to pursue pleasure, beauty, and joy.
We also love bicycles, and in the Slag Glass City bike trails abound.
Slag Glass City publishes continuously on the web, posting something new every month or so as we begin and more frequently as we progress. We publish all shapes and disciplines of nonfiction arts, including: stories, reportage, essays, lyrics, photographs, visual arts, film and video, digital and audio works, performance, and new web-friendly forms we’ve yet to imagine.
We accept general submissions on a rolling basis, from 15 September through 15 June. Our guidelines and the link to our submission manager is available on our SUBMIT TO THE CITY page.
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Who else is the Slag Glass City?
EDITORIAL INTERNS: (2022) Jessie Kern and Emily Richards; Haley Pratt; (2021) Amanda Matthews; Mia Goulart, Christy Margeson, and Claire Talluto; Caitlin Costello and Tessa Martinez; (2020) Kaity Aiken, Leah Scherr, Corinne Witt; (2019) Caroline Jones; (2018) Erin Roux and Jonathan Miller, Chris Schafale and Kieran Dillon; (2017) Nicole Carullo; (2014) Taylor Alcantar; Brandon Haskey; Julie Tindor
RESEARCH ASSISTANT & PROOFREADER: (2014-15) Emily Parenti
LOGO & ICON DESIGNER: Melissa Roels (2014)
WEBSITE: Jessica Ziegler
CURRENT STUDENT EDITORIAL BOARD (2022)
Katharine Anderson, Francesca Halikias, Jenna Katz, Emily LaHood-Olsen, Amanda Matthews, Danielle Moore, William Noel.
FORMER ASSISTANT EDITORS: (2018-2020) Madeline Happold; (2017-2018) Christina Laucello; (2015-2017) Amanda Hanna.
FORMER STUDENT EDITORIAL BOARDS
(2021) Garrett Eicher, John Giesa, Page Gilberg, Jessie Kern, Anna Kubik, Megan Lucas, Jess Macy, Karina Miranda, Emily Richards, Jessica Rish, Sophie Schreiber, Jenna Shattuck, Kate Soupiset, Tatiana Swancy, Elaina Williams
(2020) Kaity Aiken, Zoe Eitel, Avery Ferin, Caro Fleischer, Mia Goulart, Mikaela Lawson, Danni Park, Caitlin Stout, Jadae Sweezer, Sabrina Szos, Farren Washington, Corinne Witt.
(2019) Eli Brown, Taylor Cinkovich, Paulina Freedman, Becky Harrison, Caroline Jones, Jerad Karasek, Kaitlin Lounsberry, Claire McKitterick, Eleni Pantos, Sonja Ventura, Lilah Walley.
(2018) Kieran Dillon, Julia Getts, Nicole Ketchum-Cunningham, Samuel McKinney, Emily Natzel, Jason Olivia, Katherine Popielarz, Nicolette Preradovic, Megan Stringer, Anne Terashima, Joy Young, Annie Zidek.
(2017) Michael Bsharah, Priscilla Gil, Madeline Happold, Sophie Wanek, Courtney Aubrecht, Amanda Graber, Kaitlyn Kesler, Christina Laucello, Matthew Manning, Travis Murphy, Cynthia Nwakudu, Danielle Threlkeld.
(2016) Matthew Adams, Syeda Ahmed, Myra Baldwin, Rachel Deahl, Jennifer DePoorter, Hajrije Kolimija, Sara McCall, Moriah Meeks, Alexandra Messina-Schultheis, Diane Neeley, Rose Pacult, Whitney Rauenhorst, Sydney Saari, Anastasia Sasewich, Jessica Thompson.
(2015) Jasmine Dawson, Rose Gregory, Joe Hampton, Heather Henderson, Michael Light, Deidre McCormick, Kevin Sterne, Stephanie Sylverne, Charlie Wynne, Marieke Saffron.
(2014) Alma Cohen, Amanda Graber, Brandon Haskey, Caitlin Raleigh, Joe Valentine, Collin Llewellyn, Emily Parenti, Erin Clancy, Josh Fisher, Julie Tindor, Katie Surges, Kayla Reda, Lucina Schell, Megan Harrington, Taylor Alcantar.
All student board members were students in the DePaul University class THE AMERICAN LITERARY MAGAZINE—Idealists and Happy Fools.
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Where is the Slag Glass City?
The Slag Glass City publishes from the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. The journal is a project created by Barrie Jean Borich with support from the DePaul University English Department/MA in Writing & Publishing Program. Slag Glass City is a proud member of CLMP.
All uncredited images found on Slag Glass City are believed to be in the “public domain” or are available through Creative Commons; some of the images displayed are of unknown origin. Source links for all images are noted on the page they appear, unless they are photographs taken by the editor of Slag Glass City or author photos sent to us by our contributors. We do not intend to infringe on any legitimate intellectual rights, artistic rights, or copyright. If you are the rightful owner of any of the images posted here and you do not want it to be displayed, or if you require a more suitable credit, please contact Slag Glass City and we will immediately arrange for the image to be removed and/or provide additional credit. Access to all content on this site is free of charge and therefore we do not gain any financial benefit from the display or download of any image.