Welcome to WUNK!
This page is here as follow-up to our WUNK open house events. On this page you will find everything you need to know about the magazine, including rules regarding content, pitch and submission guidelines, and access to what other artists are contributing.
What is WUNK?
WUNK is a project designed to spotlight and elevate innovative, under-represented artists working in the Pacific Northwest. The final product will be an arts and culture magazine distributed for FREE at book stores, comic shops, record stores, coffee shops, weed stores, tattoo parlors, et cetera, and will feature a minimum of 30 artists from the PNW in each issue.
We are accepting pieces from a wide range of mediums, including fiction, poetry, comics, illustration, paintings, photography, collage, gonzo journalism, irreverent articles, satire, interviews, art review, and just about anything else you can put onto a page.
We are inspired by counter & excess culture magazines of the late 90’s and early oughts, including old VICE (circa 2008 -2013), Interview, PAPER, Nylon, old JUXTAPOZ, Mass Appeal, Thrasher, Big Brother, Mad Magazine, Zap Comix (and related publications), Smoke Signal, Vision Quest, and punk fanzines of the last four decades.
Our goal is to be eclectic, vibrant, and unpredictable, pushing new and exciting work on every page.
The Value of a Free Magazine
The main benefit of a free-to-the-public magazine is that on a long enough timeline you have 100% “sell-through rate”, and no boxes of undistributed work. Old VICE is the model for this, and every issue of that magazine that got put out would get picked up, sometimes in a matter of hours. The only caveat is that the magazine has to be good, and you can’t fill the pages with time-sensitive material (articles about upcoming events, for example), but I think we’re up to that challenge.
Our goal is to make the best magazine possible, something people will want to pick up, and then keep once they have it. Beyond all the great art submitted by our contributors, the physical item itself will be a piece of art, with thoughtful layout and innovative design, and people will seek WUNK out and be pissed if they miss it. This will be good for advertisers, but great for contributing artists. With 100% pick-up rate, that means that no ad dollar is wasted, and artists get maximum exposure in something that lasts a lot longer than a post on instagram that people will just scroll by, or not see at all.
The problem with a free magazine, is that outside of ad sales there is no money coming in, which means there’s no way to pay staff, and all involvement is volunteer. For that reason, all art contributed will be donated to the project, but ownership will remain with the contributing artist. We ask for a ten month exclusivity on accepted material, but we will not fight with folks about it. Ownership remains with the artist, and ultimately they can use their own work as they see fit.
Every dollar raised for the magazine will be put towards production, distribution, and marketing. The editors and staff will keep none of the money brought in through ad sales, but instead turn it into copies of the magazine and get everyone’s hard work into as many hands as possible.
Want to see the magazine in progress?
Click here to see what’s been submitted so far.
What We’re Looking For
We want WUNK to be a mix of high-brow and low-brow, where fine art and irreverence meet. We like art for art’s sake, and art that only exists because it exists . . . Which is a romantic way to say we are open to a lot of stuff.
We like you and we like your work. We want to publish you!
We invited you to the open house because we know who you are, and we like your work. We are open to you contributing pieces that line up with what we have seen and know from you, but we also encourage you to try something new, and expand your horizons. WUNK is a place of experimentation, and new ideas, and collaboration. Whatever you want to send us, there’s (very likely) room for it in WUNK!
Whenever possible, we would suggest you do the weird thing, the personal thing, the thing that is uniquely you that no one else could do. Be fiercely and unapologetically yourself; be bold, be daring, and explore your creativity.
We like funny, we like surreal, we like heartbreaking, we like absurd, we like thought-provoking, we like provocative, we like stupid on purpose, we like smart on accident, we like profound, we like vulnerable, we like jaded, we cynical, we like unrelenting optimism. We like a lot of stuff.
What’s Not Allowed
There are very few hard rules.
No topical politics. No named politicians, conflicts, ballot measures, et cetera. No calls to action. The internet is nonstop politics all the time, and as a print magazine we can not keep that pace. We’re just skipping that content. All art is inherently political, so we accept that there will be politics baked in, but we are avoiding explicitly political and “propaganda” art as much as possible.
No negative reviews of local artists. This town / scene is too small, and we don’t need to bully specific individuals. You can talk some shit on art movements, but stay vague enough for plausible deniability so individual artists don’t feel singled out. We want to be supportive of the scene, not tear it apart with infighting.
No outward-facing hate speech. You are not allowed to use slurs you don’t get called. You have a right to reclaim words used against you, but do not to hurl hate at other groups.
That’s it for now! I am sure more will get added based on pitches we get (if y’all get wild), but so far that’s it.
You can cuss, you can have sensual and sexual material, you can portray artistic violence. If we think something goes too far, we will let you know. As a counter & excess culture magazine, we want to let you explore artistically, and so we have almost no rules outside of “no direct insults".
Album Reviews
We’re looking for reviews of local albums, 120 words or less. These can be sincere or irreverent. No negative reviews.
If you have a favorite album of the last few years put out by a local band, and you want to bring some attention to it, let us know!
ALBUMS CLAIMED SO FAR
IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY MOB by Triple Lutz
HAPPY DEATH MEN by Happy Death Men
CANDYASSCHUCKEFUCKS by Happy Death Men
WELCOME TO THE POTLUCK by Pain Soda
How Pages Work
Color - Generic CMYK (Full Color)
Mag Size - 8.5" x 11"
Full Bleed - 8.75" x 11.25" (this will let color go all the way to the edge)
Pages - Minimum of 60 pages. Aiming for a higher page count.
Template - We have templates available for contributing artists to create pre-built pages (on occasion for things like comics). For the majority of work, artists can send us raw material that we will shape to fit the magazine (standard for all writing and most other works).
This is a sample 8.75” x 11.25” page (how a page will be before being cut down). The green is the margins, the white is the bulk of the page, the pink will be cut off.
Looking for someone to collab with? Check out the WUNK directory, and reach out!
Submission Timeline
ALL PITCHES need to be submitted by or before August 12th, 2026. Pages are limited, so if your idea is more than one page it is best to submit your pitch sooner rather than later!
ALL FINISHED WORK needs to be submitted no later than September 9th, 2026.
Send Us A Pitch!
We’re so excited to hear your ideas for stories, photo shoots, journalism, comics, and anything else you might have up your sleeve!
WE LIKE YOU AND WANT YOUR WORK!
Pitch us! Let us know what you want to contribute to the magazine! We will ask you questions, learn about your idea, and let you know our level of interest before you make anything, which protects your time and energy as an artist.
Show us! Share works in progress to make sure we’re all on the same page! If your idea changes in the execution (and art works that way sometimes), check in and let us know so we can change our expectations of delivered work.
Use us! We are a resource! We (editors Riley Parker and Zach Werbalowsky) are here to help you develop and shape the work if you prefer that hands-on experience (some folks like working with an editor) . If something is a little rough around the edges, and you want the help, we will work with you to make it sing!
We will aim to always turn things away at the conceptual level whenever possible, and not outright reject finished work. If you reach out and let us know what you’re working on, most of the time we will tell you from the pitch if it’s getting in the current issue of the magazine or not, and explain where we’re coming from.
Do you work better from a prompt? Want to be paired up with someone else? Reach out to Riley or Zach and we’ll help!
WUNK FAQ
ISSUE ONE BY THE NUMBERS
Pages - We will have a minimum of 60 pages, and we are aiming for a page count closer to 100.
Contributors - Our goal is at least 30+ contributors.
Ads - We need to sell a minimum of 8 half-page ads to produce the magazine.
DISTRIBUTION
We will be producing a MINIMUM OF 500 COPIES, and will have partner distributors all around Portland (and beyond). We will be working with book stores, comic shops, record shops, bars, tattoo parlors, and any other partners we find that promote outsider art and counter culture.
COMPENSATION
As a magazine free to the public, this project will not bring in any money for editors or contributors. All money raised will be put into production, distribution, and promotion of the work. No compensation is available in the current model.
ADVERTISERS
One question that came up is how will we get advertisers if we have explicit content in the form of sexuality, drug jive, weird ideas, et cetera. Counter & excess culture magazines have existed for a long time, and always get ads bought if they try hard enough. We will simply target places and companies that serve the same demographic. Book stores that sell weird books know that weirdos will read our mag, and then go buy their weird books. Music venues will see our coverage of local musicians, and know our readers will come to their venue. We want to reach more people like us, so we will target the places we hang out, and the companies we buy from on purpose (record labels, etc.)
CAN I (YOU, THE READER) INVITE FRIENDS?
You can absolutely invite friends to submit pitches! In fact, we encourage it!
DEADLINE?
July 31st is deadline for pitches (but you should do it before that if you can), and August 20th is deadline for all finished work.
What If WUNK Isn’t For You?
Our hope with this project is to bring people together, elevate artists, build community, and reach new people.
That said, we know that there are inherent limitations with a project built around taste. As editors, we want to support as many individual artists as possible while maintaining our vision for the content, but we’re not going to be able to serve everyone within the parameters that we’ve set. Not everyone that we want to work with is going to feel like they fit in with this current magazine project, and that’s okay.
Still, we want to help you in any way we can, even if that means supporting you in a project that is outside of the magazine, or even helping you to create a “competing” publication that lines up better with your own vision for your art and what you want from printed media. We are happy to share resources whenever possible, and at the very least we can always make time to hear your needs and offer consultation. We support the PNW art community as a whole, especially artists with limited resources, even when the goals and vision of said artists does not directly line up with our own.
If you like the “bigger ideas” that we are talking about regarding collective power, building up a stronger arts community, and better representation for local artists, but you don’t feel a connection to our vision of a counter & excess culture magazine that marries low brow and high brow works of art, please feel free to let us know where things bristle, and how we can support you as you build out your own vision.
Questions / Suggestions
We want to make this project as easy to join as possible.
If you have any questions about the process, or the goals, please reach out and let us know!
Likewise, if you have suggestions about future open house events, or this portal page, or anything else, we are very open to hearing them!
This project is meant to serve the contributing artists as a top priority, so we are always open to feedback. We won’t be able to actionize every idea, but we will consider everything that comes our way, and work towards always making this magazine project accessible, easy to engage with, and fun to be a part of.