Straitjackets was the revival of an online magazine that had lain fallow for a few years, but rose up again as a literary venue for members of the newly formed Diamond Valley Writers’ Guild in 2017. Straitjackets was retired in 2023, but the content has been preserved and migrated to free-forever hosting on Wix, but it is still accessible at the straitjackets.org domain.

Creating literature is an art form, a gift from the heart via the pen from one person to another. Before you read someone’s work, take a look at their photo and the short biography that accompanies their story or poem. Try to imagine them sitting at their computer, taking a random idea that floats into their head out of absolutely nowhere, or perhaps it’s an idea that germinated from something they experienced or observed at some point in their lives that had meaning to them. They ruminate on the idea, and if they are like me, they wake up in the morning with a sentence in their head that niggles at them until it makes its way onto paper. They write the sentence, but stop to rearrange words, or find different words, better words, that makes the sentence sing, a sentence that grabs you and pulls you right into the story. Try to appreciate how the writer creates more and more sentences, struggling with some, flowing with others. Sentences become paragraphs, paragraphs create scenes, which eventually emerge into a terrific story that got published in Straitjackets Magazine.

All issues open into their own browser tabs/windows, click the covers below to open the issues.