Letter from the Editors
Dear reader,
I asked myself many times this year: What the hell am I doing?
It was surprisingly hard to answer, even though every time the answer really was… “I’m trying?” Like, give me a fucking break? Why does the world have to end a different way every Tuesday?
Like,
I am resigning myself to my entire adult life being spent fighting Donald Trump.
Is the pandemic really over?
The planet is on fire, and people are throwing gas on the blaze to make their lives just a little bit easier.
Genocide is present day. Open your eyes.
I pay too much for rent lol.
And I am definitely addicted to my phone.
No matter what you add to this list, it’s already kind of existentially difficult… especially on top of the personal shit we each went through in this past year.
I don’t mean to bum everyone out. Good things happened, too!
Sabrina Carpenter’s Nonsense outros.
My second favorite Stephen at the Olympics.
Brat.
Zendaya’s wig in Challengers.
The total solar eclipse (huge for IG stories).
The first openly trans member of Congress, Sarah McBride (huge for everyone).
The Wicked Part One press tour (huge for me, personally).
It doesn’t escape me that these were mostly events that took place without me, phenomena I have loved personally, but had no real effect on. What have I accomplished this year, really? What have you?
TRASH MAG took a hiatus starting August 11, 2024. But in reality the hiatus had started long before.
I suspect none of us were ready to admit that we needed space and rest. It was a hard thing to admit! In our defense, the world had changed a lot since our pandemic heyday. We had started to use much more of our energy on the world beyond our laptops. Our beloved co-founder Bergen had found community in New York, and then on TikTok. I had a play produced, our brilliant Managing Editor Corinne joined another publication. Life seemed bigger than we could handle, and yet still, so, so silly.
And then we released Solace, and we found that we had much more to discover with our community than we thought.
Thank you so much for your support of Solace zine. It was created in a time of unclarity, miscommunication, and confusion. We’re so grateful that you loved and lived it.
TRASH MAG is still in a time of uncertainty.
We’re still parsing out the most valuable things we can offer to you, our community. We hope you are invested. We hope you’re still thinking the best of us.
Because even though every person behind TRASH MAG is just a human with their own worries to dwell on: We’re still with you. We believe foremost in questioning power, privilege, self-identity, and representation. That will never change. We hope you count us in to your 2025 resolutions. Because we may be dormant now—but we will rise even better than before.
With love,
Ally Lardner, Editor in Chief
Cosigned by:
Sara Ghassemzadeh, Founder
Corinne Davidson, Managing Editor
CJ Martires, Managing Editor
