About

Through our diverse programs, resources, and long-standing digital magazine, we are bringing representation, openness, and authenticity to the literary world one piece at a time.

“Writing should never be a solitary act.”

— Brian Dang, 2021 Fall Resident

We believe that honest, thought-provoking dialogue has the potential to shift cultural paradigms, and this begins with us.

Join Seventh Wave
Our Approach

We are reimagining the status quo and dreaming into existence a new vibrant creative community.

We’re infusing excitement back into the editorial process and empowering writers to express themselves and voice their opinions, to challenge every assumption about what it means to be themselves.
Intimacy

The act of writing can be a lonely venture, especially since so much of the literal writing that we do is a solo endeavor. Seventh Wave aims to break down the bigness of publishing by establishing space for meaningful connections between writers and editors, new and established writers, and contributors and readers.

Inclusivity

We welcome and celebrate our community of individuals who come from historically underrepresented backgrounds and perspectives. We build our ever-growing and ever-evolving community for and with artists. We dig deep into the hard conversations that impact our lives, our environments, and our relationships to one another.

Relationship-building

In an increasingly transactional world, our writing community needs a welcoming and nurturing place in order to flourish. Seventh Wave understands this deeply and is dedicated to continuing our intentional, human-centered approach so creativity thrives. After all, there is no writing without writers.

Vanguard

Honest dialogue has the potential to shift culture. Seventh Wave is committed to co-creating a literary future that is potent, diverse, and dynamic. Built on a foundation of passion and care, our growing community of writers is dedicated to cultivating a supportive and creative space that platforms new voices.

Responsive

The literary world can be unpredictable and hard to navigate; Seventh Wave is a beacon. We face change confidently and our proclivity to evolve ensures that writers will have a community to call home for years to come. Our collective knowledge will inform and shape future generations of writers.

Our Values

We are dismantling the systems and hierarchies that have long existed in the literary world.

Seventh Wave is a literary community championing the voices of writers, artists, and creatives with diverse backgrounds and perspectives.

We strive towards a future unbound by traditional and conventional publishing industry standards, where the words of our community weave narratives that honor our heritages, preserve our legacies, and reaffirm our stories.

Belonging

A safe space that cultivates a sense of togetherness and welcoming to anyone who walks through our door.

Empowerment

Uplifting, supporting, and empowering each and every contributor we work with.

Integrity

By committing to our values, we sustain ourselves and our community amidst the noise of the literary world.

Our Story

We wanted to build a literary space that would be accessible, joyful, and communal.

Seventh Wave has always been a sum of all its parts. We began as most ideas begin — unformed and in earnest — back in 2015, as a conversation between four creatives who wanted to figure out what it meant to be a writer or an artist in the world. Specifically, we wanted to understand what it meant to engage with social issues within our own work so that we might contribute meaningfully to the global conversation. 

The first thing we built wasn’t a magazine, but a community. For a full year before we launched our first issue, we held casual roundtable discussions and rooftop parties and readings to get a feel for what issues people were passionate about. Through these, we witnessed the power of holding safe spaces for conversation and saw how the exchange of ideas could create a force-field between people from different identities and backgrounds. We knew that we wanted to infuse the magazine we published with this same sense of camaraderie and curiosity.

Since then, we’ve grown into a community of hundreds of contributors spread across the world, with a dedicated team of editors, artists, and facilitators who are similarly committed to reimagining the status quo. We publish new writers, artists, and activists each year through our magazine and our community anthologies program; offer in-person residencies — ranging from four days to two weeks — available exclusively to our Seventh Wave alum; and host two digital residencies per year, open to writers and artists from around the world. Other ways folks can get involved include One-Time Talks, in-person events, and the Writer’s Hub. We seek to continue our relationships with contributors long past the point of publication; we want to be a home base for those venturing out into the literary world.

We build community for and with artists who come from historically underrepresented backgrounds and perspectives. We dig deep into the hard conversations that impact our lives, our environments, and our relationships to one another. We lower the barrier for the voices we believe in to be heard. As an organization that champions art in the space of social issues, we approach everything we do with radical intimacy: from creating calls to publishing pieces, engaging with the public on social media to hosting residencies and events. We still believe that honest, thought-provoking dialogue has the potential to shift cultural paradigms. As such, human exchange, inclusivity, and accessibility comprise our core ethos, and are foregrounded in every editorial act. We live, we breathe, and we beckon this work.

Team

We believe that it matters a whole lot who is working behind the scenes to make this all possible.

We are a largely volunteer staff scattered across the country and around the globe, individuals who honor inclusivity and accessibility. Get to know our team of editors, artists, and facilitators below.

See full team
Partners

We wouldn’t exist without the continued, enthusiastic support of the literary and arts community.

We’d like to extend our appreciation to all of our past partners, from collaborators to venues that have supported and hosted us throughout the years: Hugo House, Elliott Bay Book Company, Open Books: A Poem Emporium, The Seattle Public Library, Common Area Maintenance, Hotel Sorrento, Say Yes Electric Collective, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Guernica, Same Page Reading Series, Sunday Salon, Dixon Place, and more — a deep thank you to these outlets for elevating the work that the Seventh Wave has done and continues to do.