Q+A — Fall 2025

Your questions answered!

To tie everybody over while I work on putting our first issue together, I thought I’d do a Q+A for anybody who has any questions about Fang & Flower! Thanks to everyone who had something they wanted answered. And the questions don’t just have to end here—if you have anything else you would like to ask, leave it in the comments!

“Who is/are the person/people behind this project? :)”

from Andrea Benvenuto

Uh oh, somebody’s asked me to talk about myself. Here goes nothing, I suppose!

As I’ve mentioned in prior posts, there is one person running this magazine in any official capacity, that being myself! My name is Jean, and I’m a Minnesotan university student hurtling towards graduation at an unnerving pace for my liking. I’ll be graduating next fall with a BA in English, a minor in sociology, and a certificate in creative writing. I’m a writer in my own time, although school has been eating up my motivation, but my work often obsesses over things like vampires and queer women and all those important facts of life. I try not to promote my own publication on here because it’s nowhere near as neat/polished/consistent, but you can find me at Jean J. ⋆˚࿔ if you have any care to! I’m also available to support on Buy Me a Coffee and am planning to use whatever I’m gifted there to help pay for my education and literary pursuits.

“What inspired you to start a Gothic-themed litmag?”

from Shak

Well, I’m obsessed with the Gothic genre in all forms, for starters. I fell head-over-heels in love with Dracula the first time I read it in 2022 (I believe around the same time I first read Frankenstein, which is no coincidence), and ever since then, it’s had a unique sort of grip on me, so I knew that if I was ever going to start a lit mag, it would be entirely dedicated to that broad genre.

On the more technical front, I’ve been an editor for my university’s literary magazine for the past three years! I originally started doing it because I wanted to become an editor professionally, but now it’s something that I just enjoy and find fulfilling. With this magazine, I wanted to challenge myself to cast a wider net than just my university sphere and create something that would help uplift my fellow writers within the genre!

“What should people read to get an idea of the kind of work you are looking for?”

from mayyusa

This is a tricky question because there are so many possible answers. The Gothic can take so many forms, from the classical idea of Gothicism present in Dracula and Frankenstein, to the domestic Gothic in the vein of Shirley Jackson and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, to the more regional Gothic stories and Gothic westerns like the work of Flannery O’Connor and Cormac McCarthy—and I honestly love and find merit in all of them. In my opinion, the best thing a writer can do is read broadly—as much as we love stories that nod to the classic Gothic tales, we also want new, unique stories that we never would’ve expected, so don’t be afraid to branch out a bit and read whatever calls to you.

“How did you come up with the name Fang & Flower?”

from Ali

The name was actually something I was stuck on for quite some time. I was going through a lot of ideas and none of them really felt like they stuck. Fang & Flower was something that just kind of popped into my brain and felt right—I really liked the contrast of something dangerous (“fang”) and something beautiful (“flower”) because it felt perfect for the Gothic ethos of the magazine!

“Given that I didn’t submit anything during your submission window, when will your next open period be, please?”

from pam Lawrence

We’re taking things one issue as a time, but we’re planning on doing biannual issues (twice yearly), with our next submission period taking place during the month of April 2026.