Forward to Spring

The Ear is presently in a budgetary abeyance. The hope is to produce two issues this year, continuing to provide perspectives on mental illness and contemporary/outsider art and ideas.

For me, this is a mission with several goals. The first is to some extent historical. Part of the work of The Ear is to publish the images, words and ideas of people who cannot get their voices heard in mainstream, or indeed any, media. Though we may be marginalized by illness, poverty, the legacies of colonialism, trauma or addiction, we still have things to say and have every right to assert ourselves and our ideas and bring them to the general public’s attention. By publishing The Ear, our voices remain in the historical record. We are no longer anonymous voices in the wilderness. We are part of the conversation.

Secondly, “Nothing about us without us.” Long the demand of marginalized groups to tell their own stories, create their own media. And this is true in The Ear for both visual and literary work, fiction and non-fiction, poetry and prose. Yes, we are doing something different, and we like it that way.

Please send your ideas and proposals to theear[at]gachet.org. We thank you for your support.