About

A Thin Slice of Anxiety exists out of a certain refusal of comfort, of belonging, of the mild narcotics passed off as literature. It is called “independent,” though the word has been so misused it now resembles a plea rather than a stance. Most publications that claim it merely perform their isolation, like actors rehearsing exile in a crowded room. We prefer the real thing: the absence of permission, the absence of shelter.

We look for writers who have already discovered that clarity is a wound. Those who write not to console but to expose, to unravel what little coherence remains. There is no ambition here to guide or uplift, only to linger in the fractures where meaning falters and reforms in stranger shapes.

The so-called human condition, endlessly invoked, is not a subject but a predicament. One does not explore it, one endures it. The abyss is not metaphorical it is habitual, a place we return to each time language fails to justify our presence.

We publish voices that do not aspire to be heard, only to be exact. Authenticity, if it exists, is merely the residue of someone who has abandoned the need to persuade. To democratize discourse is perhaps too generous a phrase, it is enough to say we allow what would otherwise be refused.

This is neither refuge nor ruin. It is a journal for those who suspect that reading, like living, should unsettle more than it reassures, that the page should not comfort, but remind us, quietly and without remedy, of the limits we cannot escape.

Staff

Founder/Managing Editor:

Cody Sexton

Senior Editor:

Paula C. Deckard

Associate Editor:

Leia John

Associate Editor:

Niki Perez

First Reader:

Nate Mancuso