I founded After Midnight with the goal of creating an inclusive, accessible, and vehemently anti-AI space for writers. AI has infected too many spaces that were previously presumed to be strongholds of humanity, and this literary magazine will never engage with it or support it. Our team of writers, editors, and educators are enthusiastically persevering to protect what matters. 

We voted to call ourselves After Midnight for a variety of reasons. We honor the liberatory potential of community-building in nightlife spaces, celebrating the construction of queer identities historically enabled by bars, raves, nightclubs, cruising spaces, and lesbian potlucks (a tradition continued through organizations like Queer Soup Night). Midnight is more than just Cinderella’s curfew: it’s an hour for the toil of resistance, when the safety of nocturnal liminality allows us to explore new roles and embrace our true selves. 

After Midnight also pays homage to the concept of celebrating labor that must take place when everyone else is asleep. The Chinese term 報復性熬夜 roughly translates to “revenge bedtime procrastination,” a concept that pre-dates doom-scrolling. Medieval peasants’ limited opportunities to do something other than perform labor were often found during the midnight “watch” period between intervals of biphasic sleep. If we are forced to perform conventional identities during the day, night is when we can explore and create without interruption – something that I rely on as a mother and primary caregiver. (As a newly postpartum mom, I was comforted when I learned about the Norbertine Sisters, an order of nuns who gather at midnight to pray for mothers).  

In addition to publishing fiction, flash fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, and book reviews, we also publish pieces on pedagogy, a relative novelty for a literary magazine. Many of our staff members met through Emerson College’s Popular Fiction & Publishing M.F.A. program, where the teaching of writing is deeply imbricated with the practices of writing and editing. As peers and colleagues, we seek to uplift each other’s writing, offer constructive criticism, and remind each other that we are all on the same team. We are here to support each other, and we are here to support you. 

Thank you for being here, and thank you for reading with us. 

Katherine Murray 

July 2026