Questionnaire #4: With Amanda McKay, Founding Editor / Editor-in-Chief of Literally (2025-current)

*Note: while not directly connected to The Watermark, Amanda is very much connected to publishing and editing student work at UMass Boston. I decided their perspective on what is required to run a student magazine might be valuable information, and serves as a potential window into how ‘Golden Age’ Watermark operated. Literally survives because it appropriated the tools of survival for itself and adapted, where The Watermark was a campus publication dependent on campus direction, funding, and submissions. This is an important distinction to keep in mind.

Question #1: I know who you are, but for anyone who is reading, would you be willing to briefly introduce yourself, how long you were / are at UMass Boston, and what you do / study? 

1. My name is Amanda McKay and I was at UMass Boston for about a year for their English Literature Master’s program. While studying there, I worked off campus as a tutor at another university and in the archives department of Healey Library. I left UMass Boston in August of 2025 to become an Assistant Director at a public library.

Question #2: In the interest of disclosure, I have written a history of on-campus student publications. Literally is frankly unique and fascinating because it is one of 2 currently publishing literary magazines that are not departmentally owned on UMass Boston, and is the only student-founded magazine at UMass Boston to have made it past Issue #2. Does this surprise you? 

1. This does surprise me a lot, honestly. There were a lot of fantastic magazine concepts that came out of the course that Literally originated from, and I thought they would all continue to publish! I am proud of the fact that we were able to even make it past the first issue.

Question #2.5: Would you be willing to walk me through what the average workflow looks like for an Issue?

1. Absolutely! Just as a note, this is going to be a little bit of a condensed version. The team will typically meet once a month, or more if needed during this time, and there is often a lot of back-and-forth between myself and Anna, as well as the editors, to make sure we are all on the same page about everything. I included the major steps that we take during the process, but am happy to go into more detail if you’d like. As of today, we have three editors, two co-editors, and varying amounts of readers for submissions. The first step is planning with my co-editor editor in chief, Anna (also a UMB student), to figure out key dates for the upcoming issue. These dates include open and close submission dates, when contributor acceptance and rejections are due, and when editors are due, among other things. We also set goals for the issue and discuss things like marketing, outreach, etc. Sometimes we discuss themes for the issue, too, but these often come to us once we have our accepted submissions. After this, we meet with our team via Zoom and discuss the upcoming issue, letting them know the timeline, going over any questions, things we are hoping for, etc. From here, the submissions open and we advertise and reach out to various authors or groups that we can find. We have a shared Google Drive which we use to keep track of accepted submissions and edits. We specifically have a tracking spreadsheet that everyone updates as they work so we are all in the same loop about acceptances, contract, payments, author details, etc. Around this time, or sometimes toward the design portion, we reach out to a photographer or artist to license some images. Sometimes we use Death to Stock, it all depends on what we are going for. Once submissions close and pieces are accepted, the edits begin (however editors can edit and accept onna rolling basis, it just depends on the editor), contracts are sent out, and the designing portion begins. After edits are confirmed with the author and an editor-in-chief, it goes onto the final pages into the magazine. The designing process often takes a little while and happens all on Adobe InDesign. Once this is completed, we send payments to authors and editors, get our publication onto our printer’s website, upload the digital version, and then market it. We also send PDFs of the issue to our contributors and editors.

Question #3:  Would you be willing to talk about funding your Issue #1, as a student publication? Did you get university support, even informally? After speaking with Lila, the Prose Editor at Queeah, they set up a GoFundMe for donations. Did Literally operate on a similar funding logic? I know you have switched to a model where you charge a submission fee, and sell physical copies of Literally now that you are established. But in the beginning, what did funding look like?

1. For our first issue we did not go with any kind of crowd-sourced funding. Myself and my two other groupmates chipped in to have the publication made. Luckily, it wasn’t too expensive. I paid about $15 for Adobe Creative Cloud (thanks to UMB’s discount), we paid for copies to be printed which was somewhere around $100, but I can’t remember exactly how much. Then, we paid for launch party supplies. All that to say, we paid out of pocket. As of now, we are very close to breaking even on our issues, and we are hoping to accomplish that with issue 4.

Question #3.5: How many copies of Issue #1 were printed?

1. We printed 25, if I remember correctly. We wanted to have enough for the class as well as our few contributors. No one had to pay for these as they were apart of a class project, we just handed them out.

Question #4: I did some research, and found you were listed on Chillsubs, a very prominent writers platform to solicit submissions. Did you do this for Issue #1? What encouraged you to move from a campus-submission policy to a more internet / ‘global’ policy? 

1. Getting on Chillsubs was all thanks to Anna. She is well-versed and more in tune with the literary space than I am. We didn’t do this for issue 1 because we weren’t sure how far we’d end up going, or if we’d continue at all. We got on Chillsubs when submissions opened for our second issue, simply for the fact that we needed more submissions. When we were only scouting writers from UMass, we only received about 12 total. We have steadily been growing the amount of submissions we receive, hoping to pass the 100 threshold with our upcoming fourth issue. It felt imperative to take the submissions global so that we can receive enough submissions and grow our writer showcase.

Question #4.5: I have looked at some contributor lists, and see in Issue #3 some student submissions. How important is UMass Boston’s literary ecosystem to Literally? 

1. Very important! Not only is this where Literally was born, but we rely on our contacts and friends for various things. For example, Lila has been a reader for us and has been a faithful supporter of Literally. Julie Petrini & Meia Geddes were featured in our third issue. Our current fiction editor recently graduated from UMB. This is just a sliver of the people that have helped Literally become what it is. Not only are the people we know important, but we reach out at the beginning of every submission period to the MFA program to let everyone know that we are accepting pieces again. We love receiving submissions and support from UMB because it is Literally’s home. We also are lucky enough to have Askold Melnyczuk as a supporter. He is the professor who ran the course that Literally stemmed from as well as someone we hold in high regard. If it wasn’t for his expertise and knowledge, Literally would not even be feasible for us.

Question #5: building on that, how else did you find contributors, and what was your selection process like, feel free to focus more on Issue #1, if you’d like. 

1. Our first issue was vastly different from our second and third issues. For our first issue, we were in a time crunch (we had about 5-6 weeks from start to finish), so our submissions were only open for a week or so. We hung up posters at various libraries, and I posted the open call on social media. At the time of issue 1, we were in the process of learning everything about a lit mag, so we didn’t know everything we know now. We read the submissions, which came to us on a Google form, and rated them in a spreadsheet. From there, we chose the ones that fit Literally’s mission statement and wouldn’t take too much time to edit. Now, we have an email list that we reach out to every submission period which encompasses various school’s MFA and creative writing programs. We also have a “hopefuls” list that we keep, which is authors we would love to see in our magazine. We do a lot of email outreach, social media promotion, and word-of-mouth. We have a longer submission window now, too, so we no longer have a time crunch.

Question #6: To the best of your knowledge, did anyone in the archive or university admin know about your work building a student-led publication? What would you have thought if someone from the archive or the university did show up to class and ask to learn about your class’s project as a student led publication? 

1. Since I worked at Healey library’s archives, I know that one archivist knew about the publication, but only the fact that it was a class project, and not something that would be ongoing. If someone did show up to our class or the in-class launch party, I would be thrilled. I know that Askold Melnyczuk, the teacher of the class and a mentor during this process, has his own collection in the archives, along with Consequence magazine. To even spark an interest in the archivist's mind would be exciting, and would even feel like some sort of encouragement to continue, if that makes sense.

Question #7: During your class, or even your independent research, did journals like ‘The Watermark’ or ‘Writ Large’ ever come up in conversation?

1. Yes! Askold often mentioned UMass’ publications, and I knew about them prior. A few of the students in my class also worked on the publication. 

Question #8: Have you ever heard of something called the Waterfront? 

1. I have not heard of the Waterfront before.