End of the Year Insights

Though Radon went public on January 2nd, 2022, we began laying the groundwork much earlier. In many regards we already passed our one-year anniversary. It took multiple lifetimes of learning and growing until the three of us who began Radon were in a place to make it a reality.

From the beginning of 2022 through to the tip of 2023 we have gone from a DIY idea to a growing community of almost a dozen editors, five dozen authors, thousands of submissions, and a home for countless.

It's easy to wax poetic in posts like these, as we don't often enough stretch our writing muscles. But we love the editing work we do, and wouldn't have it another way. To save space and your sanity we'll use a bullet-point system.

- We recently launched our author interview feature, to much fanfare. Replacing the unused graffiti wall perk, our authors and readers alike have taken to the new section of the site. We are currently working our way through the issue 1 authors and in the middle of January will begin working through Issue 2 authors.

- Speaking of January, we release issue 3 on January 15th! We are still reading for two more weeks to ensure we capture every gem submitted to us. Due to the holidays we have our work cut out for us during the production process. 

- Due to the banning of other anti-fascist voices on Twitter, we have opened a Mastadon account and are active: @radonjournal@kolektiva.social. Please do give us a like and join the arena.

- Our dual subscription with Seize the Press has galvanized support and drawn many positive eyes. We have gotten to know Johnny from StP well and love what they produce and feel it is the perfect match of anti-capitalist journals.

- Thanks to each of your help, we are now at $70/month from Patreon. 64% of our way to full funding and doubling our author pay rates is one amazing feat. Especially since we are relatively new to the game, to see the love from all is humbling. Note that our site has no ads or other revenue sources, so what the community gives is all we get.

- Two Radon authors won the Best New Weird Horror award! We are immensely proud of Charlotte Ariel-Finn and Colleen Anderson for their victory, as are we of Alex Kingsley making the shortlist.

- Radon spent the majority of its fall semester nominating its authors during award season. To over a dozen awards we nominated most of our poets, and we are proud to do so. We put everything we have into this journal, and want to pass it all along to the authors. We were writers once ourselves, and so know how hard it is to find someone to champion you. We will always go above and beyond in this department.

- Our move to Submittable was expensive (~$300/year) but very much worth it. It has saved us hours a week in back-end coding and spreadsheet creation.

- Our most common reason for rejecting a submission is that it does not fall into our genres. We have found that the perfect Radon story is one that is entertaining and but also packs a profound message.

- If you have not joined our Discord, please reach out to us and we'll get you situated.

- Any suggestions you may have, we are all ears. We are open to constantly reinventing ourselves for the better.