TIMOTHY McSWEENEY’S ULTIMATE COMBO SUBSCRIPTION

$230.00 $180.00
Giving this combo subscription as a gift? Click here to download an official printable PDF gift notice.

This is the combo subscription for McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, McSweeney’s New Release Subscription, and Illustoria magazine. To subscribe to any of these on their own, or for multiple variations thereof, 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

As we look ever onwards—galloping toward the future—we’ve put together our most ambitious combo subscription yet. Our Ultimate Combo Subscription is practically guaranteed to satisfy every reader in your life, young and old. In one fell swoop, you’ll get: four issues of our multi-award-winning McSweeney’s Quarterly, three issues of Illustoria, the beloved magazine for younger readers, AND the next six non-children’s titles published by McSweeney’s Publishing. What more could you ask for? Let us know and maybe we’ll figure out how to include that next time. In the meantime, we’d like to think this ludicrously good deal will tide you over.

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

Illustoria #26: Blue
Welcome to the blue Issue! Explore the many hues and moods of this fascinating color, with cover art by Isabelle Arsenault—made with a cyanotype print process using sunlight to create turquoise tints.

Learn how to make blue ink from copper pennies and a slurp-tastic blue Slime Drink with Dog Chef (Illustoria’s in-house celebrity cook). Try a blue-themed fill-in-the-blank writing game, and capture wild ideas in your own story-planning diagram. Learn about dangerous blue creatures like the popevine swallowtail butterfly and the blue dragon sea slug. Read myths about how the sky became blue, written by young authors around the globe. Check out interviews with our cover artist and an ink-maker from Toronto.

Find all this plus ponder how blue feels with our guest poet; revel in all the shades of blue: azure, indigo, cobalt, and ultramarine; find blue-hued music, book, and art supply recommendations from Illustoria’s staff and contributing artists; and that’s just the tip of the (blue) iceberg!

McSweeney’s 78: The Maker Believers
In McSweeney’s 78: The Make Believers (guest edited by Thi Bui and Vu Tran), ten writers of the Vietnamese diaspora write from the eclectic hodgepodge that is their shared imagination of what it means to be “Vietnamese.” Packaged in a beautiful foil-stamped cigar box (with art by Bui on each and every surface), and including two booklets, one menu, and a glossary of broken Vietnamese, the work in this issue spans from highbrow to lowbrow, proper to naughty, logical to absurd, and painful to funny. Published on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, its contributors work across perspectives and multiple languages. In this completely singular, nothing-else-of-its-kind anthology, these artists write (and illustrate!) from a place of collective loss and joy.

Porthole by Joanna Howard
World-renowned art-house film director Helena Désir may (or may not!) be responsible for the on-set death of Corey, her latest muse, leading man of the moment, and frequent bedmate. Haunted by the accident, a long trail of ex-lovers, and the corporate film studio who desperately wants to keep her, their cash cow, at work, Helena unravels and is swiftly delivered to a luxury retreat known as Jaquith House, where fellow sufferers of psychic exhaustion—an agèd sound artist, an international entrepreneur, a tennis pro, a woodsman, twin Finnish massage therapists, and a sex-addicted chef—ferry her from meal, to rest activity, to spa experience, to canoe ride, and back to dinner again, with unmatched hilarity and wit. Told with a captivating quick clip of a gait, Porthole is a portrait of an auteur at the peak of her powers and in the midst of an extravagant, albeit well-dressed, meltdown. Hallucinatory and imagistic, filled to the brim with champagne toasts, boathouse romps, brothels, yoga pants, Parisian hotels, dressing room hookups, and red carpet faux pas, Porthole gifts us the world through the eye of the camera lens, as if through a sea of glass, and asks: If we’ve sinned in the service of art, can we be forgiven?

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 Subscriptions renew after six issues at a price of $95, and Illustoria 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 any of the three 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,” “End Illustoria Renew,” or “End Ultimate Renew” depending on your desires. All subscriptions placed by June 1, 2025, will begin with Illustoria #26: Blue, McSweeney’s 78: The Make Believers, and Porthole. Refunds will be accepted only up until the first issue of your renewal is shipped. 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 thirteen-publication combo subscription: $90

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