“I always wanted to be a musician but never thought I had the raw talent to pursue it. Instead I reverted to singing in the shower, in the car, or at karaoke once a week. But as a contributor to and reader of Half Mystic, I am made into that musician once again. I am just a small instrument, one voice among the works of visual, auditory, and literary artists. And what I song it becomes. I am overcome with the sound.” —Diannely Antigua, author of Ugly Music

Mission

We have a fondness for music.

This is to say: we like music that haunts us whole and gives us language for beginning. Music ochre and buried, intimate and limitless. We like music that laughs too loud and kisses too hard. Music that watches without flinching. Sky-stretched music. Open-mouthed music. Music tender and tremulous. Music swathed in becoming. Music that knows what it can’t live without. Music meaning open palms and open psalms, meaning laughter as part of the bargain, meaning eyes up and homesick for tomorrow.

Half Mystic, established in 2015, is an international and independent publishing project dedicated to the celebration of music in all its forms. Our staff, contributors, and authors have been featured in and recognised by Best American Poetry, Best New Poets, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, The Chicago Tribune, Ploughshares, BuzzFeed, NPR, Teen Vogue, Simon & Schuster, the Pushcart Prize, the MTV Video Music Awards, the Billboard Music Awards, the Grammy Awards, and beyond. 

Our free blog showcases essays, interviews, histories, and selections that form and fortify the meaning of music in its transcendent, resonant multitudes. Our semiannual books are experiments in prayer and outrage, the heartbeat of humanity set to a 4/4 time signature, a darling muck that intentionally champions the unsung and unheard. Our annual journal issues are limited edition, gorgeously-crafted, keepsake collections of art, lyrics, and writing featuring the work of 20 contributors in celebration of a specific musical theme. Our live and online gatherings perform literature and music in conversation and context. This art is what we came for: the wreck, and not the story of the wreck. The thing itself, and not the myth.

We believe in sacrifice and solitude, in dissonance and defiance, in wildflowers and wallflowers, in the mundane and the marvellous, in all things full of gods. We believe in listening to the ghosts. We believe in laughter so hard there’s no sound and in the still before the train comes. We believe in every verb. We believe in cataclysm. We believe in truth.

And mostly? We believe in music.

To be honest, even after a decade we’re not entirely sure what that means—but this project is our best attempt at figuring it out, one carefully-crafted release at a time.

History

Half Mystic was founded by editor-in-chief Topaz Winters in July 2015. Our first journal issue, Allegro, came out in the summer of 2016. Our first gathering was the launch of Half Mystic Journal Issue IV: Grazioso at BooksActually in Singapore, in December 2017.

The press arm was founded in the spring of 2018. In July 2019, we reached 10,000 pages of manuscript submissions read.

From 2018 to 2021, we released two seasons of a fortnightly podcast—Half Mystic Radio—which is now in retirement. Season I was hosted by editor-in-chief Topaz Winters, and Season II was guest hosted by poet and comedian Stephanie Dogfoot.

From inception, our operations have been entirely funded by reader and bookstore sales.