TIMOTHY McSWEENEY’S ULTIMATE 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 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 #24: Love
What is LOVE? In this issue, featuring a gorgeous cover by Valerio Vidali, we spotlight friendships, families, hobbies, fan clubs, and unlikely animal buddies. Famous duos of kidlit reveal love in action, a poet ponders where love resides, and collaborating artists discuss the bittersweet joys of co-creating. Learn to say love in another language, send anonymous valentines, and make fairy bread for your bestie.

Write a short story about a professional raisin squisher, learn about unlikely animal friendships, and read an interview with Ashton Mota, an Afro-Latino youth activist. Make wild forage paint brushes, check out cartoon hearts drawn by kids from around the world, explore book reviews submitted by readers on the subject of friendship, and so much more loving content it will make your heart explode into bits!

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.

Kayfabe by Chris Koslowski
At twenty-six, Dom Contreras has already spent a decade jobbing through the minor leagues of professional wrestling as Hack Barlow, a three-hundred-pound axe-swinging lumberjack. As his body breaks down and his star power fades, he must invent a new gimmick before he loses the only job he’s ever known. Meanwhile, Dom’s seventeen-year-old sister Pilar is eager to make her own pro wrestling debut. Dom is determined to keep Pilar under his wing, away from the predators of a business infamous for eating its young. At the same time, he has a vision for her meteoric rise to the top—not just of his own outfit, the middling Mid-Coast Championship Wrestling promotion outside of Charlotte, but all the way to stardom (and a big payday) in the WWE. The siblings are close, spending much of their time packed into Dom’s ancient Honda Civic en route to shows across the South, but as Dom craves privacy and Pilar reckons with her brother’s conflicting roles of roommate, father figure, manager, and coach, their relationship quickly begins to fray.

After Dom loses his temper in a match and Pilar injures herself preparing for her big tryout, Bonnie Blue, the eccentric owner of MCCW, spots an opportunity. She is poised, after years of scheming, to unveil her life’s handiwork: an underground, guerrilla-style pro wrestling network with bouts climaxing in real, premeditated injury. To save his career—and his sister’s hopes of breaking out—Dom must become Bonnie’s new star and take on the one persona he swore he’d never embrace.

McSweeney’s 75: First Fiction
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.

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 October 15, 2024 will begin with Illustoria #24: Love, McSweeney’s Issue 75, and both Yr Dead and Kayfabe. 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