Sixteen years ago, I launched Big Other, introducing it as “an online forum of iconoclasts and upstarts focusing its lens on books, music, comics, film, video and animation, paintings, sculpture, performance art, and miscellaneous nodes and sonic booms.” It would be a place where great minds with big hearts could “explore how we are made and unmade by images, language, and sound; examine computer-mediated worlds; and dance along with various tumults, genre- and other border-crossings, trespassings, transgressions, and whatever, nevermind.”

Since then, Big Other has far exceeded my hopes and expectations, to say the least. Be sure to read interviews with me in Heavy Feather Review, Maudlin House, and Volume 1 Brooklyn about my editing and publishing the journal!

So many things to celebrate. For instance, in our sixteenth year, I’ve published superb writing by the following literary artists:

Jeffery Renard Allen, Rae Armantrout, Martine Bellen, Charles Bernstein, Kim Chinquee, Elaine Equi, Antonio Gamoneda (translated by Katherine M. Hedeen and Víctor Rodríguez Núñez), Paul Hoover, Andrew Joron, Karen An-hwei Lee, Michael Leong, Tony Leuzzi, Joe Milazzo, Yannick Murphy, Aimee Parkison, Kathryn Rantala, Martha Ronk, Joanna Ruocco, Melissa Sauma (translated by Ariel Francisco), David M. Sheridan, Lisa Russ Spaar, Paul Stubbs, Cole Swensen, Michel Vachey (translated by S. C. Delaney and Agnès Potier), Chris Vaughan, Marjorie Welish, and Can Xue (translated by Karen Gernant); and Hungarian Poetry Folio (translations by George Szirtes).

2025 found the following books published by some of the world’s finest publishers, all of which include writing previously published in Big Other:

Kim Chinquee’s Contact with the Wild (Madhat Press)

Michael Leong’s Dear Vase Already Shattered Against the Fragile Floor (Black Square Editions)

Heller Levinson’s Crossfall (Black Widow Press)

Robert Lopez’s The Best People (Dzanc Books)

Michael Martone’s Table Talk & Second Thoughts: A Memoir in Flashes (Cornerstone Press)

Aimee Parkison’s Body of Evidence (Unbound Edition Press)

Dead Code and Other Dramatic Entertainments (Anti-Oedipus Press), which includes Andrew Joron and Andrew C. Wenaus’s “An Aerobatic Alogue: Andrew ± Joron ± Wenaus on the Novum”

Here are ten ways you can help these books (and other superb off-the-radar books):
1. Buy the book.
2. Read the book.
3. Review the book.
4. Interview the author about the book.
5. Ask your bookstore to order the book.
6. Ask your library to order the book.
7. Attend events related to the book.
8. Give the book to someone else.
9. Talk about the book.
10. Teach the book.

Within these sixteen years, I’ve published writing by Pulitzer Prize winners Rae Armantrout and Forrest Gander, National Book Award winners Daniel Borzutzky and Arthur Sze, Grand Master of Science Fiction and Fantasy Samuel R. Delany, American Book Award winner Edwin Torres, and a host of other stellar writers, including Harold Abramowitz, Julie Agoos, Micheline Aharonian Marcom, Roberta Allen, Will Alexander, Osama Alomar, Rosaire Appel, Louis Armand, Carmen Bardeguez-Brown, Margo Berdeshevsky, Charles Bernstein, Sarah Blackman, Gabriel Blackwell, Alistair Ian Blyth, Erika Bojnowski, Jorge Neri Bonilla, Jaswinder Bolina, Laynie Browne, Jeff Bursey, Grace Campbell, Michele Carlo, Tobias Carroll, Olivia Kate Cerrone, Jimmy Chen, Kim Chinquee, Ewa Chrusciel, Jane Ciabattari, Robert Coover, Lynn Crawford, Laura Cronk, Gillian Cummings, Renée D’Aoust, Shome Dasgupta, Tom DeBeauchamp, Raymond de Borja, Nik De Dominic, Joey De Jesus, Caridad De La Luz, Shira Dentz, J. S. DeYoung, Debra Di Blasi, Lyn Di Iorio, John Domini, Leisha Douglas, Rikki Ducornet, Elaine Equi, Norman Fischer, Joan Frank, Brian Evenson, Jared Daniel Fagen, Norman Fischer, James W. Fuerst, Kenning JP García, Rigoberto González, Daniel Green, Ted Greenwald, Lisa Gulesserian, Tina May Hall, Melanie Hyo-In Han, Jefferson Hansen, Alissa Hattman, Karen Heuler, JC Holburn, Tim Horvath, Jessie Janeshek, Andrew Joron, Michael Joyce, Belle (Bom) Kim, Brian Kiteley, Tom La Farge, Babak Lakghomi, Karen An-hwei Lee, Michael Leong, William Lessard, Hilda Lloréns, Norman Lock, Robert Lopez, Brendan Lorber, Sean Lovelace, Ángel Lozada, Kimberly Lyons, Yongbo Ma, Dan Magers, Peter Markus, Michael Martone, Cris Mazza, Jennifer Maritza McCauley, Miranda Mellis, Joe Milazzo, Albert Mobilio, Aaron M. Moe, Juan J. Morales, Rosalie Morales Kearns, Ted Morrissey, Pedram Navab, Urayoán Noel, David Ohle, Lance Olsen, Danielle Pafunda, Joe Pan, Aimee Parkison, Willie Perdomo, Meg Pokrass, Nick Francis Potter, D. A. Powell, Ernesto Quiñonez, Dawn Raffel, Kathryn Rantala, Victoria Redel, John Reed, Jeffery Renard Allen, Dimitri Reyes, David Leo Rice, Doug Rice, Charles Rice-Gonzalez, Elizabeth Robinson, Peggy Robles-Alvarado, Martha Ronk, Luis Othoniel Rosa, Joe Sacksteder, Lisa Russ Spaar, Pamela Ryder, Jerome Sala, Roberto F. Santiago, John Schertzer, Davis Schneiderman, Peter Selgin, Rone Shavers, Deema K. Shehabi, Gary Sloboda, Ken Sparling, Laurie Stone, Stephanie Strickland, Terese Svoboda, Cole Swensen, Arthur Sze, Kailey Tedesco, Michael Templeton, Rodrigo Toscano, Tony Trigilio, J. A. Tyler, Joanna C. Valente, G. C. Waldrep, William Walsh, watibirí, Kelly Weber, Marjorie Welish, Andrew C. Wenaus, Richard Wertime, Curtis White, Joshua Wilkinson, Tyrone Williams, D. Harlan Wilson, John Yau, Can Xue, Jess Yuan, and Micah Zevin.

On June 22, 2025, I hosted the 2024 Big Other Book Awards Ceremony. Recognizing excellence in literature published in 2024 and supporting the vital work of innovative writers and adventurous presses, I announced the winners of the 2024 Big Other Awards in each of the following categories: fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and translation. A Readers’ Choice Award and awards for lifetime achievement and outstanding service to the literary community were also presented.

Speaking of awards, Big Other has received awards from The Best American Poetry, The Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, the British Science Fiction Association, Entropy, and Wigleaf! Thanks, again, to all the judges, editors, publishers, etc. Here’s a list of the awards:

Kimberly Ann Lyons’s “Coffee with Lavender” was selected for inclusion in The Best American Poetry 2023 (Scribner Books).

Tina May Hall’s “The Extinction Museum #506: Home Pregnancy Test, c. early 2000s” was selected for inclusion in Best Microfiction 2023.

Dawn Raffel’s “The City of Serena” was selected for inclusion in Best Microfiction 2021.

Dawn Raffel’s  “Three Cities” was selected for inclusion in The Best Small Fictions 2021.

Robert Lopez’s “However Many Sayings to Live and Die By” was selected for inclusion in The Best Small Fictions 2021.

Hillary Leftwich’s “Past Hertz” was selected for inclusion in The Best Small Fictions 2021.

Tim Horvath’s “Chop” was selected for inclusion in The Best Small Fictions 2021.

Big Other was featured on Entropy‘s “Best of 2020-2021: Favorite Presses, Magazines, Publishers, Journals.”

Tina May Hall’s “The Extinction Museum, Exhibits #357, 7, and 36” was selected as one of Wigleaf’s top 50 pieces of very short fiction on the web for 2020.

Peter Markus’s “This Boy’s Tongue” was selected for inclusion in The Best Small Fictions 2020.

Paul Kincaid’s “Blogging the Hugos: Decline” parts One, Two, Three and Four won the 2010 British Science Fiction Award for Nonfiction.

Some of the writing I’ve published in Big Other has been subsequently anthologized in The Best American Poetry 2023, The Best Small Fictions 2020 and 2021, Best Microfiction 2021 and 2023, and Wigleaf‘s “Top Fifty 2020”; and it has also been subsequently published by Anti-Oedipus Press, Bellevue Literary Press, Black Square Editions, Black Widow Press, BlazeVOX, BOA Editions, Broken Sleep Books, C&R Press, Coffee House Press, Copper Canyon Press, Cornerstone Press, Driftwood Press, Dzanc Books, Ellipsis Press, FC2, Flowersong Press, Four Way Books, Get Fresh Books, Grey Book Press, Juncture Workshops, Lamar University Press, Madhat Press, Marsh Hawk Press, New Directions, Omnidawn, The Operating System, OR Books, Outpost19, Pelekinesis, Persea Books, Ravenna Press, Rescue Press, Roof Books, Sagging Meniscus Press, Scribner, Sonder Press, Spuyten Duyvil, Sundress Publications, Tinfish Press, Unbound Edition Press, the University of Arizona Press, Vegetarian Alcoholic, and Wesleyan University Press.

Here are some other highlights:

In 2019, I launched the annual Big Other Book Awards, which recognizes excellence in literature and supports the vital work of innovative writers and adventurous presses. In addition to awards for fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and translation, we present a Readers’ Choice Award and awards for lifetime achievement and outstanding service to the literary community.

In 2020, I published a folio on Micheline Aharonian Marcom’s writing. This was followed by a folio on Robert Coover’s writing in 2021. And in 2022, I published Puerto Rican Writers Folio: A Hauntology., which collects vital new writing by New York State Poet Laureate, Willie Perdomo, Nuyorican Poets Café’s Executive Director, Caridad De La Luz; literary giants Giannina Braschi and American Book Award winner Edwin Torres, and many other exemplary writers. Introducing the folio, I wrote: 

Big Other’s Puerto Rican Writers Folio is a kind of phantasmagoria, a haunting of various embodiednesses and dismemberments. […] It’s an active remembering, re-membering, a knowing, conscientious foregrounding of the past and present, and imagined futures that conjures ghosts that disturbs the peace of the contemporary. And isn’t that why we, that is, artists are here, here to disturb the peace, as James Baldwin defines the role of the artist?

Late September 2022 found me emceeing an evening of readings from Puerto Rican Writers Folio: A Hauntology at the People’s Forum.

2023 found me launching Subversity, Big Other‘s online para-academy, a “community of dissensus,” where we collectively examine vital experimental, innovative texts written by engagingly unruly authors. Each session of the seminars comprises two parts: a ninety minute-long discussion of a recently published book followed by an hour-long Q&A session with the author of the discussed book. Subversity’s inaugural line-up of writers included Pulitzer Prize winner Rae Armantrout, National Book Award winners Daniel Borzutzky and Arthur Sze, and American Book Award winner Edwin Torres.

And if that weren’t enough, our podcast, Jamming Their Transmision, has featured Rikki Ducornet, Samuel R. Delany, Debra Di Blasi, Norman Lock, Dawn Raffel, Eugene Lim, William Lessard, and many others.

Here’s some praise from stellar writers for Big Other and my work helming it:

“Big Other [is] one of the very best online innovative arts & culture magazines out there.”
—Lance Olsen, author of Skin Elegies, My Red Heaven, Dreamlives of Debris, Theories of Forgetting, and others

“John Madera is passionate about good writing and the ideas that good writing spawns. Moreover, he is a great friend to the writers of literary fiction who are lucky to have merited his attention.”
—Norman Lock, author of Feast Day of the Cannibals, The Wreckage of Eden, Love Among the Particles, and others

“John Madera’s beautiful project, Big Other, [is] always the source for writing that troubles and views from offside.
—Angela Woodward, author of Natural Wonders, End of the Fire Cult, and more

“John Madera and Big Other are my go-to places to go for when I want to know what is most true and pure in the ways of the literary world. I can’t say I know of anyone else in the world quite like John, or quite like Big Other, and it’s this kind of singularity that I am always on the hunt for, and am pleased always by what I find in John and the things he has curated at Big Other. Where else in the world can a single sentence be praised. Where else to go to do such crucial listening.”
—Peter Markus, author Bob, or Man on Boat, as well as five other books of fiction

“John Madera is surpassingly generous to other writers.”
—Laurie Stone, author of is author of My Life as an Animal, Starting with Serge, and Laughing in the Dark

“John Madera is one of the greatest champions out there of under-recognized writing.”
—David Hollander, author of L.I.E. and Anthropica

“John Madera is a tireless champion of literary writers and their books.”
—Dawn Raffel, author of The Strange Case of Dr. Couney, Carrying the Body, Further Adventures in the Restless Universe, and In the Year of Long Division

“John Madera [is] an editor with a keen eye for detail and opportunity…”
—Davis Schneiderman, Director, Lake Forest College Press / &NOW Books

“On social media and off it, John Madera’s among the most tireless literary advocates we have.”
—Joe Milazzo, author of Crepuscule w/ Nellie, The Habiliments, and Of All Places in This Place of All Places

“John Madera’s heart is as big as his critical acumen is sharp.”
—Brendan Lorber, author of If This Is Paradise Why Are We Still Driving

“Writers who have the opportunity to work with John will consider themselves most fortunate.”
—Matthew Binder, author of High in the Streets and The Absolved

“John Madera is a true literary citizen and an amazing advocate for small press literature. He […] is a personable and generous human being, is an insightful reader, and is committed to the continued importance of innovative writing, in all its forms.”
—Janice Lee, author of Imagine a Death

“John Madera, for me, is that most valuable member of any literary community: a conversation starter—a gifted reader who loves literature, and for whom reading is an art, a practice.”
—Harold Abramowitz, author of Blind Spot

“Following Big Other means food for thought every day!”
—Jane Ciabattari, author of Stealing the Fire

“John Madera is a ray of light. His heartfelt passion for, and deep knowledge of, literature and all its vast potential is extraordinary. Thoughtful, analytic and practical, he keeps great company. His vast network of writers and publishers reconnects me with favorite books/writers and introduces me to new ones. What a Good Man He Is.”
—Lynn Crawford, author of Shankus & Kitto: A Saga, Fortification Resort, and Simply Separate People, Two

“When my cowardly first publisher dumped me, and I was down on my luck, two men picked me up and dusted me off. The first was Ryan W. Bradley, who published two of my books at Artistically Declined. The second was the founder of Big Other and its eternally renewable source of energy, John Madera, who actually found reviewers for those books, which meant that they were read. That’s all any writer really wants. But I don’t want to imply that Big Other is good only because it was good for me. Novels and stories and essays don’t have to be social melodramas with characters you are encouraged to love because you can relate to them and characters you are encouraged to hate because they’re cartoon people—but they are incontrovertibly social. We are who we are and write what we write because of the people around us; that we are independent geniuses succeeding on our own terms is pop-culture bullshit. Big Other is an emphatically social endeavor. It’s a community not of yards and cars and apartment doors and media platforms and dogma, but of minds and and ideas and work. And where else can you celebrate Wallace Stevens these days? The man was a Taft Republican for Christ’s sake!”
—Gary Amdahl, author of The Daredevils, Across My Big Brass Bed, I Am Death, and more

Thanks to all of the abovementioned writers, for writing the best words in the best order, for creatively and intelligently contributing to the critical dialogue about art, literary and otherwise. Thanks, too, for your many acts of literary citizenship, the many ways you help build and sustain community.

Finally, thanks to all the readers and supporters of Big Other and its writers.

Here’s to another sixteen years and beyond!

(Image: Julie Mehretu’s Hineni, 2018)