About

A Short History of Visionary Tongue

What does the word Visionary mean to you? It is easy to simply pounce upon the nearest dictionary to find answers to this question, and still go away empty handed. The idea behind Visionary Tongue is simple – to provide a voice for those who wish to sing, an audience for those who have a tale to tell.

Established in 1995 by British fantasy author Storm Constantine and Eloise Coquio, Visionary Tongue grew out of Storm’s involvement in teaching creative writing classes. Recruiting a number of professional friends and colleagues, among them Graham Joyce, Christopher Fowler and Freda Warrington. Storm wanted to evolve a regular small press fiction magazine aimed at promoting and encouraging new talent.

During 1999 VT followed many magazines in becoming fully online, until 2002 when it changed again into a printed magazine with online support.
Editorial Support

VT is in unique in what it offers the small press market. Though our team of experienced editors, accepted material for the magazine is given positive feedback when needed, in order to bring your work up to a professional level of publication. Showcased in each issue is what we see as some of the most evocative and talented people of the new millennium.

Staff

Donna Scott [Editor]

Donna Scott is a writer, freelance editor and performer. As a writer, she has several publishing credits, including stories in the anthologies Shoes, Ships & Cadavers: Tales from North Londonshire and The Bitten Word from Newcon Press and Under the Rose from Norilana Press. She has been a freelance editor since 2003, and has carried out work for The Black Library, Immanion Press, Oxford University Press, Solaris and Angry Robot Books. Donna is also a popular performance poet and was the first official Bard of Northampton. She is now a member of the Rrrants Collective of poets and performers. She squeezes in a bit of stand-up comedy as well, and gigs all over the UK. Donna is also Administrator for the British Science Fiction Association Awards (Yep – she likes science fiction lots).

Keep up with her non-stop goings on at www.donna-scott.co.uk

Jamie Spracklen [Editor]

Jamie SpracklenCurrently masquerading as a poet in darkest Essex, Jamie’s connection with Visionary Tongue Magazine goes back to very early days of the magazine, with one of his early poems appearing first in Issue Two and later his first published short story in appearing in Issue Six.

Jamie occasionally remembers he has also had a career in archaeology, and has been writing and editing small press magazines since the early 90’s. After organising several successful poetry and multimedia evenings and being published in numerous magazines and anthologies, Jamie has recently concentrated on performing his poetry live in venues across the UK.

When not writing poetry and short stories, Jamie can often be found working towards his second degree in Literature and a Masters in Ancient History & Classics, but when not deep in studies of obscure roman tyrants, he likes to totter round his garden and talk to himself in Latin, drinking far more then is good for him when unchaperoned.

Most recently, Jamie has been working with the artist Kerry Jones in a planned collection of her work shortly to be published by the Visionary Tongue Press.

www.jamiespracklen.co.uk

Powder Monki [Web Designer]

Powder MonkiPowder Monki, aka Sarah Louise Hicks graduated with a Fine Art Degree in 1997 and is a multi-media artist working in textiles, drawing, graphic & web design and photography. She has both organised and shown work in several exhibitions and most recently was a co-organiser of Sundown, a regular open mic poetry and multimedia evening. Other interests include genealogy, gardening, cooking and music.

www.powdermonki.co.uk
www.facebook.com/powdermonki

Kerry Anne Jones [Artist]

Kerry Anne JonesStarsLikeRoses is the online moniker for Kerry Anne Jones. She is a young Fine Artist, based in deepest, darkest Essex. She is a painter who works with a wide range of themes, styles and materials to create innovative, contemporary works of art. Her ultimate goal is to create artworks that question the very traditions of painting and what it means to be a painter in the 21st Century. In addition to serious artistic endeavours, Jones also has a vivid imagination and tireless creativity and works hard to bring bewitching maidens, handsome adventurers, devilish demons and strange creatures of fantasy to life in drawings, paintings, models and more.

www.starslikeroses.com
www.facebook.com/starslikerosesfb

Ruby [Artist]

RubyRuby started drawing from her imagination long before she could or indeed would talk. And that’s the way she prefers it, communicating to the world using images rather than words. Still heavily influenced by the fantasy novels, traditional fairy tales and world myths and legends absorbed from her childhood reading – Ruby has grown-up into a multimedia illustrator interested in exploring the darkly sensual, symbolic and surreal undercurrents of life (some of which are based in fact but mostly – sadly, often the best – are only possible in fiction). Pulled towards works by writers such as Storm Constantine who create sublime worlds populated by bewitching characters, Ruby has found an adult source of fuel for her art.

Ruby has been told that her illustrations ‘blend perfectly the mythological, the classical and the future fantastic’ (thanks V.P). And if that wasn’t praise enough, that they are also ‘evocative of both Beardsley and Mucha’. This is an idea that makes her blush and stutter at the thought. Her first love has always been the simple complexity of a black ink line on a piece of white paper, crossing over another. Her belief that it might just slightly (even remotely vaguely) be possible to make a career out of drawing came in the mid-nineties when Ruby’s already distinctive line art, found a natural home within the pages of alternative small press publications. She figured that if there were people out there that liked and understood her stuff, that one day someone might pay money for it. A surprise nomination in the ‘Best Artist’ category in the BSFA awards in 1997 made her smile non-stop for a week. This was mainly because she was safe in the knowledge that she would never win it and therefore not have to make an acceptance speech.

www.rubysasylum.co.uk

Mia Hart-Allison [Reviewer]

Mia Hart-Allison Mia Hart-Allison has always been desperately in love with literature and aspires to contribute to it something meaningful and beautiful. She now lives in the outer recesses of London with her husband and girlfriend. She has a degree in Politics and has studied creative writing at Birkbeck and with the Open University.
Her influences include: Sylvia Plath, Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Shirley Jackson, Daphne du Maurier, George Orwell, Raymond Chandler, Philip K. Dick and Hunter S.Thompson.
She has published various poems, articles and reviews in such magazines as Staple, Poetry Express, Open Wide and Black Poppy.
She finds reading and writing to be two of the very few things that distract her from the nihilistic horror of an entirely meaningless universe.