About
Strip Mall Magazine is a literary publication based out of the MFA program at California Institute of the Arts.
We're named for the infamous suburban sprawl of Southern California, home to CalArts, and perhaps the strip mall capital of the world. For a lot of people, strip malls are places of ridicule. Self-negating in their ugliness, they represent the worst of America's instinct to bulldoze, impose, and forget. But for us, strip malls are also cornerstones of community; sites of delight and discovery.
At Strip Mall Magazine, we're most interested in works that experiment with narrative and form, and fall between gaps in genre. Works that remind you that, even in the midst of ugliness, there are unseen possibilities--another street, another corner, another strip mall, in which you might find exactly what you're looking for.
You can view our submission guidelines here
Our Team
Natalia Aris
Co Editor-in-Chief
Natalia (She/They) is a writer originally from Turkey. She has an MFA in Creative Writing and is now working on her MA at CalArts. Her interests include video games, researching and writing fanfiction, drinking wine (especially with her dad) and discovering new trinkets to be obsessed with. She likes making her hyperfixations everybody's problem. In her fiction, she likes working with familial trauma and literary fiction that includes elements of horror and romance. Natalia's favorite strip mall is one in Houston, Texas, where she can indulge in a bowl of extra spicy pho.
Syd Olsberg
Visual Art Editor
Syd (any pronouns) is a writer and creative originally from Toronto, Canada. Syd is now working on her MA at CalArts. Their interests include watching freaky movies, (especially ones by Canadian filmmakers), eating seafood, Adventure Time, and Dan and Phil. She writes about the fantasy of Route 66, Americana, and colonialism. Syd's favorite strip mall is one in Toronto, at the corner of Bathurst and Lawrence where she can go to one of her favourite restaurants, United Bakers.
Daniel Pope
Visual Art Editor
Daniel Manning Pope Jr. is an artist, researcher, and cultural theorist with a background in photography and new media. Receiving his MFA from the University of North Texas in 2023, Pope’s work is centered on the nexus of aesthetico-politics and cultural media studies. Pope has displayed both in individual and collaborative exhibitions across the United States, and his most recent work was published by Diffraction, Strip Mall Magazine, and Hyperspekulation. His most recent work is focused on ‘content’, social media feeds, and parapolitics, in an attempt to better understand the relations between media cultures and politics. His favorite strip mall on earth is 34th St. between Indiana and University Avenues in his hometown of Lubbock Texas. Consisting almost entirely of small businesses and nearly completely void of big brand stores… 34th St is the place you can buy an AR15, sell your gold jewelry, buy unique Irish antiques, visit a rather seedy adult book store, barter on rare coins, buy a medium format camera or one of the best migas breakfast burritos on earth, go to both an african and indian grocery story, buy a dozen oysters at a bar you can still smoke indoors at the bartop, all in the same mile stretch. While it is not the prettiest place around, it is a unique slice of Americana which is becoming increasingly rare in the United States.
Jeremy Giles
Co Editor-in-Chief
Jeremy (He/Him) writes climate and speculative fiction and poetry about the end of the world, among other things. He has a degree from Johns Hopkins in Writing Seminars and International Studies. Currently, he is an MFA Candidate at CalArts. His work can be found @jeremygileswrites and jeremygileswrites.com. He spends his free time hiking across random trails and getting sugar-free fruit pops at the Von’s in the strip mall a half mile from campus.
Sierra Zhang
Visual Art and Hybrid Editor
Sierra Zhang (He/Him) is an LA-based conceptual artist-poet, comedian, graphic novelist, and filmmaker creating (strange) relationship technologies, emotional infrastructures, and metaphorical machines. Working under the name @lonelycorridor (lonelycorridor.framer.website/, he works with the unconscious, spontaneity, linguistics,
"play," the ephemeral, and rituals. Specifically, spontaneous playing "nonsense ensemble," works that appear one thing but are another in fact "duped fest," and embodied, condition-based language-making "!writing." He would randomly wander around Valencia Town Center, randomly getting a drink from Popeyes and sitting on a random couch, writing random stuff.
Jade Quinn
Poetry Editor
Jade Cruz Quinn (she/her) is a poet and essayist from Los Angeles. She is an MA candidate in Aesthetics & Politics at CalArts. Her areas of focus include divinatory and ritual poetics, cultic theory, and the role of language and rhetoric in systems of power. Her favorite strip mall is the one with the Villa's Tacos and Grocery Outlet on Figueroa in Highland Park.
Courtney Nord
Poetry, Hybrid and Creative Nonfiction Editor
Courtney (She/They) is a writer, musician, multi-modal artist, and trader from Southern California. She studied Political Science as an undergraduate and is currently an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at CalArts. Her writing works across poetry, memoir, cultural criticism, finance, and experimental forms, with particular interests in memory, identity, family, class, markets, and the ways private experience becomes cultural material. She is also the founder of Nostalgic Nuance, where she works in music publishing and sync, and has spent several years releasing music and trading financial markets. Her current projects include Unbecoming, a long-form poetry manuscript, and Lost in the Market, a literary project about trading, time, risk, and class. Courtney's work can be found at https:// courtneynord.rocks/. Courtney's favorite almost-strip-mall is Valencia Town Center, where an ordinary errand can become an hours long adventure through window shopping, frozen yogurt, and handmade soaps.
Past staff
Katie Clemmer— Editor-in-Chief, Head Non-Fiction Editor
Jay Oandasan— Head Fiction, Head Poetry Editor
Caroline Vasquez— Head Non-Fiction Editor, Head Visual Art Editor
Grace “West” Lyde— Head Social Media
Berlin Mair— Founding Editor-in-Chief
Tamar Bresge— Head Poetry Editor
Anna Dória— Poetry Editor
Davan Hamilton— Fiction Editor
Analise Roth— Head Fiction Editor
Elizabeth McKee— Non-Fiction Editor
Jason Peckham— Poetry Editor, Visual Arts Editor, Graphic Design
Kini Sosa— Contributing Editor, Graphic Design
Melanie O’Hara— Communications