Subversify is a magazine that provides alternative perspectives to mainstream media. Our content features commentary, fiction, reviews, cynicism and just about anything else that disrupts brain waves, goes thump in the night or that causes ripples in the smooth flowing media stream.

Mitchell Warren is a freelance writer and novelist from Fort Worth, Texas. He has two published How-To books with Fabjob.com, and has worked as a full time ghostwriter for Words You Want for the past three years. He has also worked with therapist Tova Feder, written movie reviews for The Miami Poetry Review, published features at Box Office Magazine, and contributed relationship advice at Ask-A-Man.com. His short story entitled “Real Estate in Deltosa” will be published in Chimeraworld #6.

He is the current publisher of Subversify Magazine and hopes this magazine will disillusion readers all over the world so that they become more negative, learn to distrust authority, hopefully lose hope, religiously question faith and generally help bring a nihilistic air to humanity.

“Some great perversity of nature decided to give me a tune completely out of keeping with the general symphony; possibly from the moment of conception. I learned to read and speak almost simultaneously. The blurred and muffled world I heard through my first five years of random nerve loss deafness suddenly came alive with the clarity of how those words sounded on paper. I had been liberated for communications. I decided there was nothing more wonderful than writing. It was easier to write than carefully modulate my speech for correct pronunciation, and it was easier to read than patiently follow the movements of people’s lips to learn what they were saying. It was during that dawning time period, while I slowly made the connection that there weren’t that many other people who heard the way I did, halfway between sound and music, half in deafness, that I began to understand that the tune I was following wasn’t quite the same as that of my classmates. I was just a little different.

General education taught me not only was I just a little isolated from my classmates, my home was just a little isolated from the outside world. I was born in Alaska, making me part of one of the smallest, quietest minorities on earth. I decided I could live with this. What I couldn’t live with was discovering a few years later, in the opening up of the pipeline, which coincided with my first year of junior college, that there were entire communities of people; more than I could possibly imagine; living impossibly one on top of another in vast cities. It wasn’t even the magnitude of this vision that inspired me so much as the visitors who came from these populous regions and seemed to possess a knowledge so great and secretive I could never learn it in any book. I became at once, very conscious of how rural I was and how little I knew beyond the scope of my environment. I decided it was time to travel.

The rest is history; or at least, the content of my stories. I traveled… often to college campuses, dropping in and out of school until one fine day by chance I’d fashioned a bachelor of arts degree in psychology. I’ve worked a couple of newspapers, had a few poems and stories tossed around in various small presses, never receiving a great deal of money, which I’m assured is the norm for a writer. I spent ten years in Mexico, watching the peso crash. There is some obscure reason why I did this, tightening up my belt and facing hunger, but I believe at the time I said it was for love.

Here I am, back home, in my beloved Alaska. I’ve learned somewhat of a worldly viewpoint; at least I like to flatter myself that way. I’ve also learned my rural roots aren’t so bad after all. I work in a small, country store. Every day I greet the same group of local customers, but make no mistake. My store isn’t a scene out of Andy Griffith. The people who enter the establishment, which also includes showers, laundry and movie rentals, are miners, oil workers, truck drivers, construction engineers, dog sled racers and carpenters. Sometimes, on the liquor side, the conversations became adult only in vocabulary. It’s a good thing, on the opposite side of the store is a candy aisle filled with the most astonishing collection, it will keep a kid occupied with just wishing for hours. If you tell your kids they can have just one, you have an instant baby sitter; better than television; as they agonize over their choice while you catch up on the gossip with your neighbor.

We also receive a lot of tourists, a lot of foreign visitors. They are usually amazed at this first sign of Alaskan rural life style beyond the insulating hub of the Anchorage bowl. Many of them like to hang around and chat. They gawk at our thieves wanted posters. They laugh at our jokes and camaraderie with our customers. I’ve learned another lesson while working there. You don’t have to go out and find the world. If you wait long enough, it comes to you.”

Grainne Rhuad gained a love of learning at a young age at her grandfather’s knee. It was he who taught her that all that could be known was out there for the taking. She has made it her life’s work ever since to know as much as possible. Her incurable inquisitiveness and her sometimes irritating ability to remember diverse and seemingly meaningless facts has served her well in her quest to bring learning and entertainment to people through her writing.

Grainne currently resides in Northern California, although her restless gypsy background takes her on many excursions. It was here that she settled long enough to complete her B.A. In Psychology and spend 8 years working in the Social Work field with Children, Adolescents and Families.

Grainne is wife, mother and sister. Her madly passionate redheaded genes lend themselves to argument but should always be taken in the best of spirits. She sees argument mainly as a sport which needs constant conditioning. She also prides herself in being oxymoronic in all things. She highly suggests that every reader fact check everything for themselves as she sees herself as a storyteller, a bard, and a suggestor of themes more than a historian. Her main purpose is to cause feelings in the reader which may or may not be comfortable, but which should make them think on either a cognitive or subliminal level. She would say, “If you feel, my work is successful. If you respond…well that is the highest of complements.”

A. B. Thomas (NeoNorth)

A. B. Thomas is an energetic main content writer and humorist for the Subversify staff, gracing our pages with outrageous cartoons, uninhibited stories, and very serious, perceptive articles. He hails from Alberta, Canada and set out to discover the situation of the homeless, who he discovered were treated much in the same way as they are under the umbrella of U.S. Social Services. This is the coverage of one man’s story. There are many more out there, waiting to be heard.

Astra Navigo

Astra is a Renaissance man who lives in Portland, Oregon. He’s a writer, gardener, musician, business-owner, high-tech entrepreneur, gourmet-cook, cigar and wine-aficionado.

The David

Calling himself “one man with an opinion” The David is a featured commentator for Subversify, his opinions laid down like the stokes of a hammer driving in nails.  His underlying message is simple; you can be unconcerned until they come for you or you can speak out now against injustice.

Jane Stillwater

A long time human rights activist with a very open viewpoint, Jane has spent the last ten years as an International news correspondent.  Sponsored by the Independent News Service, her tours have included embed in Afghanistan and Iran, coverages of Russia, and a recent eagle eye view of politics in Central America.  She has a published book, “Touring the Mideast; Bring Your Own Flak Jacket”, and continues to grace the pages of Subversify with her observations and live news coverage.

Savannah Thorne

Savannah Thorne holds a summa cum laude M.S. from Norwich University, a magna cum laude M.A. from DePaul University and a B.A. from the University of Iowa where she studied under many notable writers and was given the unprecedented honor of acceptance into the Graduate Writer’s Workshop while still an undergraduate.

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PHOTOGRAPHERS;

Rayanne Orr:

“I am a thirty-one year old Outdoors Woman who was born in Libby Montana and has traveled all over most of the lower 48 (Continental United States) and Canada. I drove up to Alaska seven years ago from Idaho and have lived in the mountains most my life. I guess you could say I am a true mountain girl. I have also been an avid airplane enthusiast and small bush plane mechanic. Also riding, showing, and training horses has been a big part of my life. Recently I discovered the hidden talent of nature photography which has become very dear to me, ass hiking and the outdoors have always been close to my heart. I have done a lot and seen a lot.  Some might say more than most do in a lifetime, and photography gives others a chance to see those things.

Rocky D. Brown:

I am a 32 year old singer songwriter recently moved to Alaska from Austin Texas. I have traveled quite a bit in the lower 48. I Guess you could say  I am a jack of all trades master of none. I have been a motorcycle mechanic, tattoo artist, construction worker, and artist. I come from a very small town in Oklahoma where i was raised with simple values that i still hold on to today.   However like any artist, I tend to like to color outside the lines, which has brought me to photography. I have yet to leave the USA, however from the moment i stepped off of the plane in Alaska, there hasn’t been an image that has escaped my attention. Moving to Alaska to be with my soul mate has brought me not into another country, but a whole new world. We have been photographing everything we do. We love to hike and take pictures of just about anything imaginable. Just like any song I have written, I hope my photography will tell a story

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