ILLUSTORIA + McSWEENEY’S COMBO SUBSCRIPTION

Giving this combo subscription as a gift? Click here to download an official printable PDF gift notice.

This is the combo subscription for both Illustoria and McSweeney’s Quarterly. For just Illustoria, click here. For just the Quarterly, click here.

“A key barometer of the literary climate.”
—The New York Times on McSweeney’s Quarterly

“This is the kind of magazine you keep on your bookshelves with your favorite books.”
— Cece Bell, author of El Deafo, on Illustoria magazine

Whether a literal family in need of reading material to enjoy at the proverbial Sunday morning breakfast table, or an individual lover of both high-quality literature and the very best in children’s illustration, the Illustoria-McSweeney’s Quarterly Combo Subscription has something for every reader in your life.

Subscribe now to receive the next four issues of our always surprising, always redesigned, three-time National Magazine Award-winning literary journal, featuring the best fiction and nonfiction we can get our hands on, AND the next three issues of the beloved art and storytelling magazine for children and their grownups, celebrating visual storytelling, makers, and DIY culture through stories, art, comics, interviews, crafts, and activities, delivered right to your doorstep at an absolutely cannot-be-beat price.

With the sort of year we have planned, there’s never been a better time to subscribe. Here’s what we have up our collective sleeves next:

Illustoria #22: Invention
In our invention issue, we look at gadgets and gizmos and the inventive thinking behind them. The brilliant inventions begin on the whimsical and ingenious cover by Taili Wu, and keep up to the very last page. Inside we highlight clever creatures with survival strategies, the inner workings of a Risograph machine, and an unsuspecting teenager doing chemistry homework who accidentally altered fashion history!

What else has been invented by accident? our guest poet, Layla Forrest-White, ponders. In the project section: Invent a font. Design a new hairdo. Draw a robot. Young writers imagine what it would be like to grow up in a family of inventors. This unusual compendium of comics, stories, and DIY ideas will keep young readers mesmerized for days.

McSweeney’s 71: The Monstrous and the Terrible
Our first-ever issue-length foray into horror, and featuring one of our biggest lineups in some time, our seventy-first issue is one for the ages. Guest edited by Brian Evenson, McSweeney’s 71: The Monstrous and the Terrible is a hair-raising collection of fiction that will challenge the notion of what horror has been, and suggest what twenty-first-century horror is and can be. And it’s all packaged in a mind-bending, nesting-doll-like series of interlocking slipcases that must be seen to be believed.

There’s Stephen Graham Jones’s eerie take on the alien abduction story, Mariana Enríquez’s haunting tale of childhood hijinks gone awry, and Jeffrey Ford on a writer who loses control of his characters. Nick Antosca (cocreator of the award-winning TV series The Act) spins out a novelette about the hidden horrors of wine country. There’s Kristine Ong Muslim exploring environmental horror in the Philippines; a sharp-edged folk tale by Gabino Iglesias, and Diné writer Natanya Ann Pulley reimagining sci-fi horror from an Indigenous perspective. Hungarian writer Attila Veres proffers a dark take on the not-so-hidden sociopathy of multilevel marketing. And Erika T. Wurth explores the dark gaps leading to other worlds. If that weren’t enough: an excerpt from a new novel by Brandon Hobson; a chilling allegorical horror story by Senaa Ahmad; a Lovecraftian bildungsroman by Lincoln Michel; unsettling dream cities from Nick Mamatas; M. T. Anderson’s exceptionally weird take on babysitting; and, improbably, much more.

McSweeney’s Issue 72
Finish out 2023 in style with a jam-packed metaphorical evening of cultural nourishment courtesy of McSweeney’s 72. Inside this three mini-book volume (bedecked with art by printmaker David Ryan), you’ll find a new play, The Headliners, by Jeffrey Neuman (produced here in an extended playbill of black and white photos from the Denver world-premiere production along with the play’s full text); and experience the hardships and thrills of life on the road as comedian and musician Tim Heidecker guides you through his intimate diary and documentary photos of his The Two Tims tour. With your whistle appropriately wetted, settle in for a full festival’s worth of literary stars including Ed Park’s latest tale of generational differences in family and love; Selena Gambrell Anderson on the intentional wrecking of a rich man’s ill-used ship; Jim Shepard’s new narrative perspective of Dr. Jekyll and his Mr. Hyde; Caleb Crain’s painfully accurate take on the time-honored tradition of hooking up at a writing conference; and Lauren Spohrer on the frightening specter of ghost planes and ghost citations, misattributions and appropriations.

Find all this plus letters considering product demand, the future as an airport terminal, teleportation of orgies to Iowa City, and lingering baby teeth from Dan Poppick, Mina Tavakoli, Vi Khi Nao, and Justin Carder; an excerpt from Eskor David Johnson’s Pay As You Go; Brian Robert Moore’s new translation of Lalla Romano; new work from Erin Somers, Adrian Van Young, Sahar Delijani, and Kevin Moffett; and the winner and runner-up of our inaugural Stephen Dixon Prize: Kristina Ten and Maz Do. Get ready to enrich your soul and live it up in the most introverted way possible, with this concentrated blast of stunning literary periodical content.

IMPORTANT LOGISTICAL INFORMATION: All subscriptions placed before December 8 will begin with McSweeney’s 71: The Monstrous and the Terrible as their first issue of McSweeney’s Quarterly and Issue 22: Invention as their first issue of Illustoria. All subscriptions to McSweeney’s Quarterly automatically renew after four issues, at 15% off a regular subscription price (currently $80.75), with Illustoria subscriptions automatically renewing after three issues at a price of $40. In the event of any future rate changes, we will notify you via email. If you’d like to cancel either subscription at any time prior to its renewal, you can log in to your account and adjust settings or send an email to custservice@mcsweeneys.net with the subject lines “End Quarterly Renew,” “End Illustoria Renew,” or “End Combo Renew” depending on your desires. Refunds will be accepted only up until the first issue of your renewal is shipped. If you’d like to give just the Quarterly Concern as a one-time gift, purchase a gift subscription here. Any subscriptions bought with the “gift” box marked at checkout will not be enrolled in autorenew.

Praise for Illustoria

“[A] beautifully produced print magazine that invites young readers to revisit arresting pages again and again … Illustoria is a visual feast, with a focus on storytelling through art and literature. In addition to crafts and art projects, Illustoria presents stories through comics, and profiles illustrators, artists, and makers … [with] messages of compassion and inclusivity … bursting with creative ideas and inspiration.”
—“Our Favorite Gifts for 6- to 10-year-olds,” Wirecutter, The New York Times

“It’s a rewarding offering that I hope sticks around for many years down the line.”
—Julie Danielson, Kirkus Reviews, blogger of Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

“[A] visually exciting magazine with a DIY attitude … offer[s] plentiful opportunities for engagement, while the quality artwork and inventive layouts are sure to inspire imaginative responses.”
—School Library Journal

“Cover to cover, its content and aesthetics are smart, modern and engaging. Illustoria is a magazine I would’ve loved to have growing up.”
— Michelle Sterling, Avery & Augustine

Praise for McSweeney’s Quarterly

“Ever shape-shifting and ambitious, McSweeney’s has redefined what a literary institution can be. Their commitment to publishing strong, strange voices and stories from the periphery has always been an inspiration and I’m always excited to see what they’ll do next.”
—Catherine Lacey, McSweeney’s contributor and author of The Answers

“McSweeney’s is so much more than a magazine; it’s a vital part of our culture.”
—Geoff Dyer, McSweeney’s contributor and author of Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi and Otherwise Known as the Human Condition

“Some magazines are comfort reads. We turn to them because we can almost predict, issue to issue, what and even who will appear in them. But others, like McSweeney’s, are challenge reads. They’re feverishly inventive, discomfortingly surprising, and therefore among the best reminders that we are actually alive. I love shouting at McSweeney’s, laughing with it, and rolling my eyes at myself while the magazine reads me like a deceptively perceptive carnival psychic.”
—John D’Agata, The Believer contributor and author of Halls of Fame and About a Mountain

“I’m incredibly grateful for the existence of McSweeney’s. Its embrace of world literature is completely unique, lucid, knowing and indispensable.”
—Francisco Goldman, McSweeney’s contributor and acclaimed author of The Interior Circuit: A Mexico City Chronicle and The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop?

Looking for back issues of Illustoria? Visit Illustoria.com.