Zona Motel is an online literary space for conversation, community, and independent literature.
| Platform |  | Pricing | Freemium | Publishes | Daily |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Issues | 540 | Founded | 2 years ago | Last Issue | 3 days ago |
| Active | |||||
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zonamotel.substack.comLatest Issues
REVIEW: Elegy for Pangaea by Mark Leidner
I started reading Mark Leidner’s Elegy for Pangaea (Fonograf Editions, September 2026) shortly before my grandfather’s death, and it accompanied me on a chaotic series of travels. Back and forth between a hospital, a pre-planned vacation, a...
CONVERSATION: Daniel Pope on Crows, Moms, and Helping Yourself
I met Daniel at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop in 2022; he was late to our first dinner as a workshop group, because he’d accidentally eaten with the high school lacrosse boys upstairs. Since then, he’s been much less embarrassing, and...
CONVERSATION: I Am Trying to Talk in a Language We Are Trying To Talk Together (pt. 2)
Editor’s Note: The first part of this conversation, along with Tom Snarsky’s introductory essay to Hannah van Binsbergen’s work, can be read here.
TS: If you’re cool with stepping back in time a little bit, some of our readers might not kn...
COLUMN: MALLCORE w/ Ricky Allen
The mall was never just a place—it was a world. A stage. A sanctuary. A crucible for identity, capitalism, yearning. In Mallcore, guests revisit the fluorescent-lit past and present of their lives through the lens of food courts, fitting ro...
GOSSIP: Week of August 10 + August Paid Zoom
Sometimes the dead horse wants you to keep beating it, actually.
AUGUST SUBSCRIBER ZOOM SESSION
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Authors
The writers behind this newsletter.
Zona Motel is a brotherhood and web space that exists to support good literature.
THE ONLY LIVING GIRL IN CHICAGO• Editor-in-Chief @MaudlinHouse \ud83d\udcda • Person who talks about music @PodHealing \ud83c\udfa7 • Horror movies @horrorpod666 \ud83c\udfa5
Head of Support at Substack. Author of the novel LOG OFF (Shabby Doll House, 2024). Interviews Editor at Zona Motel.
Nikki Volpicelli is writer, reader, and contributing editor @ Zona Motel.
M. Randal O’Wain is the author of Meander Belt: family, loss, and coming of age in the working class and the short story collection Hallelujah Station. He teaches creative writing at UNC Chapel Hill.
i already apologized
Emma Burger is the founder of the indie press, Gold Coast Editions. She is the author of two novels, Little Rich Kids (2025) and Spaghetti for Starving Girls (2021). She is an essays editor at Zona Motel and the interviews editor at Hobart.
Poet. Author of the books Path of Totality and Dead Horse. Contributing editor (Reviews) for Zona Motel.
Charlene Elsby wrote Hexis, Affect, Psychros, Agyny, Musos, Letters to Jenny Just After She Died, and Bedlam. Her essays have appeared in Bustle Books and the LA Review of Books.
hello my name is juliet escoria and I am an Editor-in-Chief at Zona Motel! I also wrote these books: You Are the Snake (Soft Skull, 2024), Witch Hunt & Black Cloud (CLASH, 2023), and Juliet the Maniac (Melville House, 2019).
Books and audio recordings of writing released by Bread & Roses Press, Three One G, and the Numero Group.
Writing and things
Founding editor of Shabby Doll House and managing editor of Zona Motel. I also wrote some books.
Erin Dorney is the author of "Yes I Am Human I Know You Were Wondering" (Autofocus Books, 2025) and many zines.
Author of five books, most recently the novel IN THE SIGHT.
Co-editor-in-chief of Zona Motel and Hub City Shorts. I also write novels and other things
Gossip Columnist at Zona Motel
\ud83c\udf38 2 hawt new books: The Complete Fear of Kathy Acker, Semiotext(e). — Myth Lab: Theories of Plastic Love, Far West press. On Instagram I’m HelterSkelley . Band is Lawndale \ud83c\udf38
writer <3
NEW DARK coming Fall 2026 from Shabby Doll House.
Shane Jesse Christmass is the author of METH-DTF, The Sex Shops of Sherman Oaks, Latex, Texas, Xerox Over Manhattan and other books. He makes music with Snake Milker. Writing, art, noise: linktr.ee/sjxsjc
is from Michigan. He is the author of the chapbooks Colossal (2025), Plantain (2018), and the Latin translation project We, Romans (2015). joshboardman.com
M. Randal O'Wain is the author of Meander Belt and Hallelujah Station. He is co-editor of Hub City Shorts: anthologies of stories from each state in the south. He teaches at UNC Chapel Hill.
Florida Apologist. Red Bull Fiend.
i don’t feel like being bored so i court disaster —nila northSun
Greater Prairie-Chicken
Gene Kwak is the author of Go Home, Ricky! and he currently lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Oklahoma State University.
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