McSWEENEY’S NEW RELEASE AND QUARTERLY 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 McSweeney’s New Release Subscription and McSweeney’s Quarterly. For just the New Release Subscription, click here. For just the Quarterly, click here.

“There are few examples in publishing that equal the care and inventiveness McSweeney’s offers their readers—the industry at large should take note.”
—Bookends and Beginnings, Evanston, IL

Life is too short to worry about not having enough reading material. That’s why we’ve decided to combine two of our most popular long-standing subscriptions into one super-sized combo, bringing you no fewer than ten McSweeney’s publications—and one special tote—straight to your mailbox. You’ll get four issues of our ever-changing, always boundary-pushing, National Magazine Award-winning literary journal McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, PLUS the next six titles from our books division, sent prior to or upon publication and bundled with special letters of introduction from the authors themselves. On their own, these books and quarterlies can retail anywhere from $16 to $30, so this is truly a deal worth writing home about. And, like the cheesiest of infomercials, that’s not all! Combo subscribers will also be sent a beautiful green McSweeney’s tote immediately upon purchase.

Take a look at what you’ll have coming your way:

McSweeney’s Issue 74
McSweeney’s National Magazine Award–winning Quarterly Concern celebrates our first quarter century of being an occasionally actually quarterly publication as so many mid-twentysomethings do (drenching ourselves in a sea of nostalgia for our misbegotten youth and looking forward into the promise of the future) with one of our most dazzling issues to date! Coming to you housed inside a deluxe tin lunchbox illustrated by the legendary Art Spiegelman, McSweeney’s 74 features a portfolio of pareidolia art by Spiegelman himself, wherein he teases out images from random watercolor inkblots; original pieces by Lydia Davis, Catherine Lacey, and David Horvitz printed onto pencils and whose meaning is designed to change throughout the pencil’s lifespan; and three packs of collectible author cards, packaged in real tear-away baseball-card packaging and featuring some of the finest writers of our time, including Sheila Heti, Hanif Abdurraqib, George Saunders, Sarah Vowell, Michael Chabon, Eileen Myles, and many more.

Find all this plus the official McSweeney’s Anthology of Contemporary Literature: a book composed of some of the greatest works of McSweeney’s past decade, with a new introduction by longtime editor Claire Boyle. Here you’ll find award-winning, shortlisted, anthologized, and otherwise feted and beloved stories from Lesley Nneka Arimah, T.C. Boyle, Mimi Lok, Kevin Moffett, Adrienne Celt, Bryan Washington, Samanta Schweblin, C Pam Zhang, Eskor David Johnson, Julia Dixon Evans, and more! Dive in with us, readers, as we bathe in the warmth of the past, and get ready for our next quarter century of always thrilling and unexpected literary work.

Yr Dead by Sam Sax
In between the space of time when Ezra lights themself on fire and when Ezra dies the world of this book flashes before their eyes. Everyone Ezra’s ever loved, every place they’ve felt queer and at home, or queer and out of place, reveals itself in an instant. Unfolding in fragments of memory, Ezra dissolves into the family, religion, desire, losses, pains and joys that made them into the person that’s decided on this final act of protest.

Told in lyric fragments that span both lifetimes and geography, Yr Dead is a queer, Jewish, diasporic coming of age story that questions how our historical memory shapes our political and emotional present. Visceral, propulsive, and at turns fluorescently beautiful and fluorescently tragic, Yr Dead is the electric debut novel from award-winning writer Sam Sax, one of our most dynamic and imaginative writers.

McSweeney’s 75: New voices
In a June 2023 submission call for new work by never-before-published writers, McSweeney’s received thousands of submissions in a single month. The stories in this issue (our seventy-fifth, an almost unfathomable milestone) are the crème de la crème of that bounty.

Guest-edited by longtime McSweeney’s editor Eli Horowitz, our seventy-fifth issue contains ten radiant stories, each published as an individual booklet with stunning art by ten different artists. All ten booklets are collected inside a beautiful and sturdy and elaborately foil-stamped dossier-like case, which opens (rather extravagantly) to reveal a series of accordion pockets—each one containing a pair of booklets—and snaps shut (rather satisfyingly) with a magnetic closure. In these brilliant literary debuts there are fish guts, meteor hunters, military coups, ghost towns, and fake orphans. The stories, whose authors and settings span continents, dazzle in their originality of vision and voice. They announce themselves with bravado, excellence, and energy. In his introduction to the issue, Horowitz writes, “I’m not sure what set of circumstances allowed these wizards to escape previous publication—youth? shyness? vast conspiracies?—but the wait is over: they have arrived.” Get this issue for eternal bragging rights of being present at the ground floor of each of these ten writers’ sure-to-be-storied futures.

And then?
Keep an eye out in 2023 for two more thrilling and innovative collections of the kind of cutting-edge literary content readers of McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern have come to expect for over two decades. Plus, unforgettable works of fiction and nonfiction from McSweeney’s Publishing.

Praise for McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern

“A key barometer of the literary climate.”
—The New York Times

“The first bona fide literary movement in decades.”
—Slate

“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, 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?



IMPORTANT LOGISTICAL INFORMATION: This is a one time combo price, all subscriptions to McSweeney’s Quarterly automatically renew after four issues, at 15% off the price of a regular sub (currently $80.75), while the McSweeney’s New Release Subscription renews after six issues at a price of $95. 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 auto-renewal, you can log in to your account and adjust your subscription settings. Or send an email to custservice@mcsweeneys.net with the subject lines “End Quarterly Renew,” “End New Release Renew,” or “End Combo Renew” depending on your desires. Refunds will be accepted only up until the first issue of your renewal is shipped. All subscriptions placed by August 1, 2024 will begin with McSweeney’s 74, and Yr Dead. If you’d like to give the Quarterly Concern as a one-time gift, purchase a gift subscription here. Any subscription purchased with the “gift” option marked at checkout will not be enrolled in autorenew.

International shipping costs for the full ten-book combo subscription: $70