We founded Fringe to fight against the homogenization of culture and the loss of revolutionary literature at the high-literary and popular levels.
This loss of variety stems from the politics of market capitalism and mass media. Because larger retailers market to mainstream perspectives, magazines that cater to specific groups (feminist, Afrofuturist, environmental) find themselves going the way of the eight-track. Such journals provide the natural mechanism by which fringe writers mix into the mainstream. Without them, corporate media rules unopposed, eliminating competing voices, or worse, co-opting their style while stripping these voices of their content. To combat this trend, we founded a free and readily available magazine to disseminate progressive voices to everyone.
Fringe is the noun that verbs your world. We are about writing that confronts and questions. We want to challenge perceptions, to drive readers to action. Fringe also provides a venue for artists who take their genres into the next paradigm—those who play with form, who work outside the box—those who are on the fringe.
Fringe's online format wastes few resources, allows us to publish frequently, and lets readers and writers all over the world access us. Currently, Fringe offers a variety of genres every two months, publishing a single contributor in each genre.
We will conclude with a brief song, respectfully borrowed from The Masses. Please Rise.
This magazine is owned and Published Co-operatively by Its Editors. It has no Dividends to Pay, and nobody is trying to make Money out of it. A Revolutionary and not a Reform Magazine; a Magazine with a Sense of Humor and no Respect or the Respectable; Frank, Arrogant, Impertinent, searching for the True Causes; a Magazine directed against Rigidity and Dogma wherever it is found; Printing what is too Naked or True for a Money-making Press; a Magazine whose final Policy is to do as it Pleases and Conciliate Nobody, not even its Readers—There is a field for this Publication in America. Help us to find it.