Cream Scene is Seeking
Editors, Techs, and Creatives
We need columnists on any conceivable subject: feminism, fashion, TV, science, and DIY. We need reviewers for films, books, weed, cereal and sex-toys. We need youtubers and tiktokkers. We need readers and editors!
Are you wild for EB White’s Manual of Style? Do spreadsheets excite you? Sign away two months of your life to serve as managing editor for an upcoming Issue. That’ll look sweet in your portfolio. No one here gets paid but we do it anyway. We must get some kind of sick satisfaction. Maybe it’s even fun. We enjoy bringing more weirdness to the world.
Hi!
Welcome to our circus of weirdness! Let’s meet the Cream Scene team –
Maybe you remember our founder from the old days?
Dia VanGunten, US
Editor-in-Chief
Writer, Curator
Dia is a long-time lover of magazines, ever since Mad and Sassy. In 1999, she tried, unsuccessfully, to launch Blushbellyfuss. We could’ve used a #bodypos publication back then, but she made connections with the amazing people who are now on board with Cream Scene Carnival. (Beppi!) This train’s been chugging along for a while now.
Dia honed her chops here at Cream Scene Carnival.
It was a magic place where kinkster bookworms converged and braggadocious irreverence found an audience. Her fervent desire for this mag is that our future contributors will find the same freedom of expression. She urges you to release the chains of “respectabilty” and speak to the messy human stuff.
If you’re worried about creds, learn more about the artist who will be handing your work – About Our EiC
Got questions?
write to our editors
OMG! Our Art Director!
Katy Somerville, AU
Art Director & Co-Editor
Artist, Writer
Katy was beamed into existence on a Monday night in the mid-eighties by stars, glitter, and a glorious Italian woman from a long line of very strong women. With Billy Joel lyrics embedded in her brain, she went through childhood unflinchingly hugging all dogs she came into contact with, reading many books, learning the harmonies to songs, and memorising the lyrics of several musicals and then getting in trouble for repeating some of them at school. She made lots of messes, both in an artistic way, and in life, due to access to craft supplies and a lived experience with mental illness, respectively.
In the present timeline, Katy likes to drink coffee, pat any animal that will engage with her, make collages, and spend time laughing and finding moments of joy wherever she can with her partner and her goofy, lanky dog. Katy claims to dislike or not believe in aliens, yet the list of movies she has rewatched (including Men in Black 3 and Alien) makes this somewhat contrary. She still makes messes but is somewhat better at the mental clean-up now. She also still sings everything.
learn more about the artist who will be handing your work – About Our Art Director
Art
At Cream Scene Carnival, our art-game is strong. Working with Katy Somerville, we pack art into every issue. We like fine art, graffiti, textiles, cartoons, even AI.
Sean Kirkpatrick, AU
Video & Multimedia Editor
Artist
Sean Kirkpatrick is an Australian artist and creator of comics such as “Baddies,” as well as the short graphic novel “The Days.” Cream Scene is doing something truly special and magical. Sean is keen to be a part of it.
They are in the queer band Baby Shower, where they play an orange bass guitar and channel much energy into sick bass lines and jumping about.
Sean likes it when their orange juice comes right up to the rim of the glass and doesn’t overflow.
They have fond memories of art classes after school, which may or may not have led to graphic design and stellar art skills (and killer skills at doing winged eyeliner).
Kiki Ren, US
Web Design & Media Management
Artist
Kiki is best described as 45% Elvira, 45% Dolly Parton, and 10% Danny Devito. Though she’s always been a lover of all forms of art, technology has always been her forte. She studied computer science for four years before dropping out and coasting through life in various retail management positions. That’s until she found her true calling: being an embarrassment to her family online.
When she’s not whipping up websites or blessing the world with memes and generative art she’s hunting for oddities at thrift stores or reading the most disturbing pieces of experimental fiction she can find. She’s a collector of aesthetics, movie quotes, and useless tidbits of knowledge of online horror series. She’s also a mother to four cute, yet demonic, fur babies.
Jesse D. Karshner, US
Staff Illustrator
Artist
Jesse Davis Karshner is a punk rock gay living in California. He enjoys the writings of Sylvia Plath, music that makes you wanna fight, fuck, or dance, beautiful and disgusting literature, and cult movies. He turns heads…usually for his individuality.
Chris James, US
Graphic Design & Web Design
Artist, Illustrator
Chris is a graphic designer and visual artist who resides in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. He enjoys living a mostly hermitic lifestyle with his family while striving to perfect a range of visual art techniques, honing his culinary skills, and chasing the heels of technological advancements. His current interests include 3D design, animation, AI technology, and puppet making at the behest of his oldest child.
At various points in life, Chris had this thought: “I wonder what it would be like to just drop everything and join a traveling carnival.” He assumed it would be highly interesting and entertaining…possibly. At the very least, it would be memorable. So when the Cream Scene Carnival came to town, Chris figured this would be a low risk opportunity to scratch that itch.
Derek L. Chase, US
Staff Illustrator
Artist
Derek L. Chase is a sometimes cartoonist, designer, and graduate of The Kubert School. Usually he is debating whether or not sleep is really worth it.
Erin Halligan, US
Staff Illustrator / writer
Artist
Erin Halligan is a writer and visual artist based in the suburbs of Chicago. She spends her free time exploring new hobbies and consuming as much art as humanly possible.
She plans to travel the world one day and write all about it.
Maresa Axtmann, EU
Staff Illustrator
Artist
Maresa Axtmann is a German artist who works primarily is collage. She is a member of the Cream Scene Team, working in The Art Department.
Lit
Brought to you by writers, we specialize in magical realism, surrealism, experimental and transgressive works. It doesn’t have to be perfect but it must have an element of the weird.
Lejla Demiri, CH
Managing Editor for FONT
Writer
Roma, 10.08.1997
My mother gave birth to me, a thinker.
A thinker is a storyteller. A thinker is a listener, an observer
Loneliness isn’t there when you’re surrounded by sunflower fields and words.
Being an immigrant for all my life I’m my own certainty and my biggest mystery. Small Italian village, picturesque swill valley, a couple of university towns and some summers in the cities.
I’m as old as my thoughts.
I’m as young as my expression.
I’m ready to share this expression of my vision.
Read me, look at me, judge me.
Feel it.
Tell me.
Now in St. Gallen.
Marz Sappler, EU
Prose Editor
Writer
Marz got a pop-up Bauhaus Ballet picture book for their 18th birthday (which says a lot, if not everything, about their family). They joined Cream Scene for the absurdism, feminism, kink, colours, opulent visuals, Deleuze, anti-capitalism, art, bodies, and a general openness for things that desperately deserve to be published, cultivated, collected and combined but seldomly or never have a place in mainstream media. Marz has a background in comparative literature, and they co-founded the Open Sewers Collective.
Pritikana Karmakar, India
Prose Editor
Writer
Pritikana, bookworm, nature-lover, occasional artist and singer, and a huge foodie, is currently a doctoral fellow of English at IIT Roorkee, India, specialising in medical humanities. Formerly a marketing content writer and editor for the K–12 education technology sector, she has found her calling in reading contemporary literature through various lenses. She hails from Burdwan, India and is a language enthusiast with varying proficiency in Bengali, English, Hindi, Odia and Assamese (in speech only for the last two).
She is also an occasional translator of Bengali works into English and a decent cook with a sweet tooth. On days when she is struggling with her majorly uncooperative body, she likes to curl up under her favourite comforter and read BL novels/fanfiction or watch Asian dramas.
Fantasy is her greatest fetish, writing fanfiction her peculiar release! If you want to indulge in her transformative works, well, the secret is in the name!
Maggie Conlee
Staff Writer & Reviewer
Writer & Artist
Maggie is first and foremost a werewolf advocate who is currently accepting recommendations for werewolf movies she hasn’t seen yet. In addition, she is a writer, artist, and lover of many things. Her interests include anything strange, sexy, sardonic, and/or sacrilegious. She joined the Cream Scene Team to indulge in all of those areas.
Charlie Cole
Staff Writer & Staff Reader
Writer
Charlie was thrust into the world chubby, pink, and not knowing how to do the whole breathing thing correctly. Once she got the hang of that her life was filled with obsessing over movies, trying to rescue every dog she ever saw, and indulging her father in his lectures about classic rock. Always lost in thought, she became really good at wringing the juice of her imagination and decided it was better to stay there. So, now she is on a crusade to turn reality into one all about art and the appreciation of and participation in that.
When she’s not huffing and puffing about the importance of having creativity in our lives she can be found covered in flour, perforating people’s ears with drums, advocating for mental health, and freaking people out with her dark sense of humor. Charlie is a little less pink these days, but still totally chubby. Oh, and she has reconciled her relationship with oxygen.
LE Francis, US
Staff Writer & Editor
Writer & Artist
LE Francis is a writer, artist, & musician making stuff from the rainshadow of the Washington Cascades. She is the fiction editor at Sage Cigarettes Magazine, sagecigarettes.com, & her debut poetry chapbook, “This spell of star & song,” is available through Bottlecap Press, bottlecap.press.
Tunuviel Luv, US
Editor
Writer & photographer
Tunuviel Luv is what happens when a theatre kid becomes a raver then a teen mom then a theatre adult. She’s spent the last 15 years as a theatrical property artisan, educator, producer and blood effects designer. She found a camera on the side of the road while lost and now she’s in a full blown love affair with photography. She’s always been a secret poet.
Frank Anderson, US
Staff Writer & Columnist
Writer
FR Anderson II is a self-described “neo-hedonist” and member of The Satanic Temple. He writes the column “Devilish.”
Ashley McCurry, US
Staff Writer & Editor
Writer
Ashley is a chronically anxious Xennial who writes flash fiction and reads for lit mags. She currently lives on a mountain with her best-friend-turned-spouse and four rescue dogs, in a home full of 80s music, horror movies, and vintage arcades. You can find her work in FlashFlood Journal, Switch Microfiction, Surely Magazine, Sky Island Journal, and others. She’s probably drinking iced coffee and thinking about Halloween right now.
Tonia “Toni” Dalia, NZ
Poetry Editor
Poet
Toni is a Bangladeshi immigrant who moved to Auckland as an older child, after living apart from her parents. She can’t bond with others, only through poetry. This place will build energy that is meaningful, not money or power. There will be more to our biography. Passion will come with this magazine. That is why.
Catherine Gantt, US
Poetry Editor
Poet
Catherine Gantt lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. When she isn’t listening to a podcast and doodling, she is watching reruns of I Love Lucy snuggled up with her two dogs Ruby and Harry.
Tech
Cream Scene Carnival is multimedia. We’re always looking for work that incorporates sound and video.
Chris James
Chris is a graphic designer and visual artist who resides in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.
Sean Kirkpatrick
Sean Kirkpatrick is an Australian artist and creator of comics such as “Baddies,” as well as the short graphic novel “The Days.” Cream Scene is doing something truly special and magical. Sean is keen to be a part of it.
Kiki Ren
Kiki is best described as 45% Elvira, 45% Dolly Parton, and 10% Danny Devito. Though she’s always been a lover of all forms of art, technology has always been her forte.
Seeking A Managing Editor
We launch themed issues over the course of a month, a few pieces a day. Commit to two months for a single upcoming issue, or sign on for more, and you’ll get valuable experience in Cream scene’s signature brand of bozo journalism. Must be queer positive, sex positive, body positive. Kill capitalism, fuck diet culture. Be fully on board with weird.
Cream Scene is Seeking
Copy editors, line editors, readers and staff writers.
We need writers who can write about art, movies & Music.
Editors, grammar nerds and slaves to punctuation..scan for typos in two pieces per issue, baby a single gem to fruition or double check after layout.
We’re rejecting good work that could get there with some guidance.
Cream Scene Carnival publishes transgressive content. Staff or contributors may use pen-names to avoid conflict within our ever present authoritarian structures.