Funhouse magazine issue 05, 2018

Literary magazine, Risograph printed. Illustrations by Guy Field, edited by Oliver Zarandi and designed by Leo Field. Arial and Times New Roman are used throughout in order to keep the thing down to earth. They are stretched and played with, in order to make them as scary and challenging as some of the stories inside.

Funhouse, available from Stack Magazines, is an illustrated literary magazine with a focus on bodies. Characterised by an odd sense of humour, it has poetry, short stories and comics that look straight into the face of sweaty, rude, and utterly unfiltered human forms.

This issue was created with renewed inspiration as editor Oliver Zarandi came across a book on the brink of giving up the magazine. Enormous Changes At The Last Minute by Grace Paley led him to write something that he was pleased with, and subsequently, as he read it at an open mic, he met some of the contributors to this latest edition. As he writes in the editor’s letter, “Whatever you love, it will find you again and again and it will save you.”

In this issue:
– Vi Khi Nao’s novel excerpt looks at two sisters, mental illness and moisturiser
– Shane Kowalski’s mini stories explore vomiters and humongous men
– James Howard’s poem explores the dangerous, disturbing world of jellyfish
– The unparalleled joy of napkins, the unaired episodes of Dinosaurs, sex and death take centre stage in Susannah Dickey’s poem Bits of Hero
– And £100,000 from a dead ‘uncle’ awaits a young woman online in Bridget Meyne’s comic.