What the fuck are we doing?

“Discordia… is funny and candid and quite abrasive, a laxative for the increasingly clenched asshole of CanLit.”
—Bardia Sinaee, Editor of Best Canadian Poetry 2024

“The emperor’s new critics.”
—Rishi Janakiraman, North Carolina Youth Poet Laureate ‘25

“Incredibly off-base.”
—Carl Wilson, Let’s Talk About Love: Why Other People Have Such Bad Taste

Discordia is a secessionist collective against the tepid mainstream literary scene, pissing on the mind-numbing mediocrity of focus-grouped MFA arts and literature, the cynical employment of bourgeois identity rhetoric, and instead championing outsider, combative, and DIY ethos. We reject the staid academic, the post-ironic faux-transgressive reactionary, the censorious killjoy, the profit-driven publishing leech, and the twee hipster douchebags of yesteryear. We encourage an antagonism against and artistic purging of the frauds and the bores via their symbolic crucifixions. We revolt against modern life and art and their hypocrisies.

We also publish zines in print. If you want to submit, you can read the guidelines here.

Why does our logo have a big “K” on it?

Homer tells the story of Eris, the goddess of discord, feeling bitter after not being welcome at a party on Mount Olympus, inscribed the words τῇ καλλίστῃ (“to the fairest”) onto an apple and threw it into the middle of the party, leading to infighting and chaos amongst the gods. This “Apple of Discord” can sometimes be rendered as just an apple with a big “K” on it, like you might see in the Principia Discordia:

Our objective is to sow discord and chaos in what we see as an altogether too-functional literary world—a world that, like Eris, we feel shut out of as outsiders—and our books and zines are meant to be that apple for us, to cause a stir.

Who are we?

Eris — Editor-in-Chief
Sire — Consigliere
Courtney Loathe — Office Manager
Xie — Events Coordinator & Head of Distro
Mike D. — Art Director
Poetry Heel — MC
Dimitri Karakostas — War Correspondent
Joshua Chris Bouchard — Haruspex
David McGorlick — Psychonaut
Doug Fnord — Editorial
Jay Gobuty — Haunting Presence