Hello friends, 

It’s February! If you pay attention to these letters (and trust me, I am not upset if you don’t; I barely do), you’ll notice that I did not write one last month. Why?, you are probably not asking yourself. Well, 1. I did not have much to say after the holidays and 2. I thought we’d let our year start and see if I had anything worthwhile to talk about after the fact.

And I do! Our first issue of 2019 was fantastic, with amazing features from Rax King, Leland Cheuk, Leah Mueller, incredible poetry from our Writer of the Month Jennifer Rodriguez, and a bunch more. If you didn’t get a chance to peruse it, that’s ok— it’s not going anywhere!

Now we’re into February, the most romantic (and, if you’re in a snowy region, the bleakest) of months. Our Writer of the Month series continues with one of the most amazing, passionate poets I have the privilege of knowing: Ingrid Calderon-Collins. Additionally, we have work from Sarah Frances Moran, Aaron Como, Jill Jacobs… look, it’s just worth the read, so go for it!

We’re happy that our fundraising efforts have made it so that we can pay a small bit of money to our writers and artists, and we’re hoping to keep that momentum going beyond this year. I admit we’re behind on the fundraising perks, and that is on my priority list for this month, before I disappear for a small bit on maternity leave. That’s right: come March there will be a new (milk!)drunk monkey in our family tree. So if you’re waiting on a perk, I ask you wait a small while longer; we haven’t forgotten about you! 

We’re open for submissions through the 28th, including subs for our second annual Pop Culture issue, so please: send us your stuff! 

I will leave you to the issue, to Valentine’s Day, or to anti- Valentine’s Day, to snow squalls and warm sweaters and the hope that spring will soon be here. This issue marks the 2ndyear of me as EIC of Drunk Monkeys, and it’s been an honor and a real wild ride. Thank you for being here with me, thank you to our entire DM team, thank you to Vanderpump Rules, thank you times a million.

Always, 

Kolleen Carney Hoepfner
EIC