About

In 2011, a small zine called The Radvocate was started in San Diego, CA as an artistic platform, free of advertisements or biases, for people to share their work. A chaotic hodgepodge of art, fiction, & poetry, The Radvocate gained a loyal following in San Diego and is now helmed by the non-profit group So Say We All as San Diego's only literary magazine. With them, it will be free to grow and evolve into something new. To make the printing official, a name was coined for the press behind the zine, something off-the-cuff but ultimately apropos. This press was called Ayahuasca Publishing.

Our name reflects our belief in the power of change through words, idea, and stories. 'Ayahuasca' is a brew of the yage vine created by indigenous shamen of South America as a powerful element of spiritual medicine. With it's help, they are able to diagnose and treat their people by visiting different planes of reality and converse with spirits for whom the human body is an open book. Others who have taken it's journey have had revelations of the true nature of the universe. It was introduced to westerners through people like William Burroughs, Alan Ginsberg, and Terrence McKenna, whose writings espoused the dangers and benefits of the brew. At it's most reductive definition, Ayahuasca is considered a hallucinogen. One of the psychoactive ingredients was later synthesized by scientists to create dimethyltryptamine, or DMT.

We believe that words, stories, and publications can also function as hallucinogens. Both have the power to open the mind to new ideas, stretch the imagination to lengths never thought possible, and transport us to fantastic new places we could never reach otherwise. Our hope is that the work we create or curate will have profound effects upon the reader's mind. Like the real Ayahuasca concoctions, we want our readers to be flung into fascinating new dimensions which will change their perceptions and complicate the human journey.

Today, we hope to publish weird, transgressive, and outright heretical works that twist & malform the human imagination to new heights. We began in 2014 with the States of Terror horror anthology, which re-imagines the folktales of the United States with a bold cast of writers and artists. We will continue into 2016 for three volumes. Information about future publications, submissions, and related projects are forthcoming.

Open your mind. Let us begin our quest.