S. A. Chant

Does your mailbox suffer from a lack of whimsy? Don’t
you wish it sometimes contained inexplicable documents from parallel
histories or intercepted the final transmissions of doomed ships drifting in the cold,
harsh void of space? Or possibly you just want the people snooping around in your mail to know you're a real freak? I can fix that for you! Who is this? Hi! I’m S. A. Chant, novelist. You might know me as the author of Peter Darling and assorted queer speculative fiction. My most recent projects include a story in Your Body Is Not Your Body, an anthology of trans-authored horror, and a class for Clarion West on gender-diverse worldbuilding. I'm an (extremely) amateur historian with an interest in 20th-century design and queer ephemera. One of my favorite ways to explore fantasy worlds is through the clutter at their margins: newspaper columns, old playbills, love letters, spam emails. I've always been fascinated by experimental, immersive storytelling, and in telling the kinds of stories usually found by sifting through disintegrating papers in antique stores and scanning the personals column for oddities. Things organic, weird, and unpreserved. What is this? It's a postcard club! Sort of! Inspired by pulp speculative fiction and vintage design, each mailing is a piece of epistolary fiction from a different universe, and everything from the design to the art and text within is meant to be &quot;read&quot; as part of the story. As a patron, you'll receive a regular physical mailing, depending on the tier you select. This will usually be a postcard, but based on the goals unlocked, it could also be a stuffed envelope, a flyer, or other assorted ephemera. Every mailing is a standalone story, so you can hop in any time. All patrons have access to a digital archive of past mailings, as well as bonus content like WIPs, notes on the vintage designs and historical tidbits, and occasional extras. Why is this? Because there are stories you can only tell with a physical object, and because I love creating narratives you can hold and study. Because I enjoy the challenge of fitting an entire story into a few inches of postcard. Because it's nice to get weird mail amidst the bills and spam. And because graphic design is my passion. In all seriousness, I've always loved making tangible goods. I'm an avid collector of pulps and prints and have spent years traveling to Artist Alleys with my illustrator friends, hand-selling art and merch. For me, there's nothing like the physical presence of design on paper and the stories that can be told through the age and texture of a printed product. In addition to making more varied and interesting mailings, my stretch goals for this project include printmaking classes on various techniques so I can get more and more involved in producing the work myself. I hope you'll join me in making the mailboxes of the world a little weirder!

Free

Receive a physical mailing once per quarter, plus full digital access and bonus content. Note: You will get the story of the month in the mail every third month you back at this level. You'll also have access to the full digital archive and get the digital mailing each month.

Messenger Imp

Get the story of the month mailed to you every month, anywhere in the world, plus full digital access and bonus content.

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