Meet Christina Chady and Stephanie Michele | Tiny Spoon co-Editors-in-Chief

We had the good fortune of connecting with Christina Chady and Stephanie Michele and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Christina and Stephanie, what do you attribute your success to?
Our literary magazine Tiny Spoon is successful because it is a vibrant extension of our own creativity. Everything that we do comes from a place of immense care and passion, and this drives us to continue to expand all that we do. True to the mission of our overall magazine to be experimental, we are always trying new things to see what best suits us. We’ll often have meetings that are vivid brainstorming sessions, where our editors are tossing around ideas, “Wouldn’t if it be cool if…” and many of these ideas will come to fruition. We are a coagulation of creative spirit. We’ve been around for five years now, as we founded in January of 2019. It seems about each year we introduce something new to try. We now offer print or online publications, social media features, residencies, workshops, and more. It gives us energy to have openness to new things and shows our community that we are actively trying to enhance all that we do and to find more ways to bring everyone together over art and literature. Tiny Spoon is an authentic expression of our love of creativity, embracing it within others, and bringing together community around art and literature, and our spirit welcomes and resonates with many who are published in our magazine, attend our workshops, apply for our residencies, and beyond! We’re grateful to all of them, and the foundation that we can all support one another and celebrate our creativity, quirky practices makes Tiny Spoon what it is.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Tiny Spoon’s foundation was rooted in a DIY and community-driven spirit, which has given us a vibrant, welcoming ethos as we continue to grow. When we first started the magazine, we were a couple of grad students with a passion for weird literature and art, and we wanted to find and support others who have a similar, strange inclination. For our first issue, we sat on the floor of one of our apartments and hand-bound each issue with a simple three-hole-punch threaded book binding to hold the folded computer paper together. With each issue so intimately created, this immediately forged a close, careful relationship to our magazine. We worked with what we had to make the first issue, and with our dedication and enthusiasm, we gradually grew Tiny Spoon, while always remembering our humble, energetic beginnings. We still have these same moments of excitement and the desire to try new things, such as adding on workshops and our residency program, that come from a similar DIY spirit. All we do for the magazine and beyond is truly a labor of love.

The work we seek for the magazine is more experimental. We love all that is imaginative and thought-provoking and prefer work that one can come back to time and time again and find something new. We also enjoy work that provides a perspective that deviates from what one might anticipate. Some of our favorites that we publish are multi-media and cross genre. For example, as of January 2024 in our most recent Issue 11 Emergence, our contributor Ash(ley) Michelle C. created a necklace poem and printed text on toilet paper as a part of a public-art installation, and in former issues we’ve had short graphic stories, poetic equations, and more. Sometimes our contributors will provide us with artist statements that allow us a deeper glimpse into their process, and we appreciate being able to more fully understand their intentions and event of creation.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
We will begin our effervescent journey across the Front Range at the iconic Trident Cafe in Boulder, CO where we will indulge on a latte and browse the bookstore while we wait to encounter whatever music or poetry event is planned that day. Next we will head to Two Hands Paperie, where we can browse beautiful colored papers, notebooks, and stationary and plan our crafting projects. We’ll continue down Pearl Street to all our favorite stores, including the Boulder Book Store and Beats Book Shop. We’ll pace ourselves through all our favorite food stops, like Piece, Love, Chocolate for their decadent truffles, Gelato Boy for the Honey Lavender gelato, Ku Cha tea shop for an afternoon of tea in their back tea room. We’ll dip our toes in the cold Boulder Creek by the library and take a quick drive to Art Parts Creative ReUse Center just across town to see what bits and pieces might inspire our creative whimsy.

As we drive down Arapahoe to satisfy our donut craving at the new Voodoo Donuts location, we can visit both of Naropa’s historic campuses and watch the prairie dogs pop their heads up under the Rocky Mountain sun!

After galavanting in Boulder, we’ll drive up the scenic route through Sunshine Canyon to the Happiness Carousel in Nederland and grab a coffee or ice cream from Blue Owl. Take a drive up past Ward to Brainard Lake to see the snow capped peaks of the mountains and hike the trail to Lake Isabelle.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Tiny Spoon simply wouldn’t be if our MFA Creative Writing and Poetics at the Jack Kerouac School hadn’t brought us all together in the same place and time. After just a semester, the two Editors-in-Chief C. M. Chady and Stephanie Michele founded and printed the first magazine on the school’s printers. We wanted to extend the spirit of the school’s poetics, which inspired us to create an “experimental bite-sized literary magazine” that would emphasize literature and art that was crossing genres and encouraging new modes of thinking. We’re grateful to all our professors there, including J’Lyn Chapman, Michelle Naka Pierce, Sarah Richards Graba, Andrew Schelling, and Jeff Pethybridge who fostered the growth of our writing by holding this precious space of exchange and community.

Website: https://tinyspoon.org/

Instagram: @TinySpoonLitMag

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tinyspoonlitmag

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCofkV7y8VWC2CzD_tldnH2Q

Other: https://www.patreon.com/tinyspoon

Image Credits
Cover art Issue 10: Amy Guidry; Front: “Burden to Bear,” Back: “Dissociate” Cover art Issue 11 Emergence: Rae White; Front: “revival,” Back: “revival {remixed}” Other images / text as indicated on each image.