Graphic by Sunny Wei ‘23.
Rebecca Gagnon ’23
Staff Writer
The cold hand of death sends chills down your spine as it reaches for you, and then, in an instant, it’s gone …
“Thanatos,” a new exclusively online literary magazine started by Rebecca Kilroy ’23 and Hampshire student Arden Young, published its debut issue on Oct. 15, 2022. According to the magazine’s website, the goal of “Thanatos” “is to encourage conversations about death through literature and art. Many people are hesitant to talk about death and dying, but that doesn’t have to be the case! Conversations about death still cause fear, anxiety and discomfort for many. We want to encourage creators and readers to think more broadly about death through different perspectives and cultures, to remove stigmas surrounding the subject and to invite healthy and respectful conversations about the fears and curiosities regarding our inevitable fate.”
“Our mission aligns with what’s called the Death Positive Movement, which is something that was started … by an activist named Caitlin Doughty, who is also a mortician,” Kilroy explained. “The goal of the movement is just to educate people about death and dying and burial options and funeral rituals … and to make those conversations less frightening and more accessible for people.”
Experts believe this movement originally began with the Hospice Movement, which was inspired by similar actions performed in the U.K., according to The Order of the Good Death, which Doughty founded. The movement then spread to the United States with the first hospice opening in 1974. The goal of this establishment was to provide more humane care for people dying of terminal illnesses while reducing the costs of such assistance. This movement is now credited, by experts such as Doughty, with the opening of more hospices and with helping the Death Positive movement spread throughout America.
“The Death Positive movement … doesn’t mean to accept death,” Young stated in an interview with Mount Holyoke News. “It means to understand it and be more aware of it, and [to] have that information … be more accessible and more talked about for everyone and anyone who wants to talk about it.”
In the spring of 2020, the idea for a literary magazine that discussed death and dying began to develop in Kilroy’s mind after taking an anthropology course titled, “Approaching Death: Culture, Health and Science,” taught by Five College assistant professor of anthropology Felicity Aulino. However, it wasn’t until she began searching for websites and magazines to publish her own works with themes of death embedded that she realized there was not an established platform for the topic.
“I couldn’t find any [magazines] and I was so surprised. … I got to thinking about it,” Kilroy said.
The idea continued to simmer in Kilroy’s mind until it boiled over and was nearly all she could talk about.
“I was talking about it constantly to my friends,” Kilroy recalled. “I kept saying, ‘Well, someone should do this, but it shouldn’t be me because I really have enough to do and I’m not qualified, but someone should do this.’ And then one day, I was like, ‘I’m just going to reach out to [Aulino] and see what she thinks, and maybe if she knows someone [and] my friends were like, ‘Yep, that means you’re gonna do it.’”
With that, “Thanatos” was no longer an idea but a conversation with the possibility of transforming into a legitimate literary magazine.
After Kilroy emailed her, Aulino reached out to the students registered in her “Approaching Death” course to see if anyone would be interested in assisting with Kilroy’s idea. Young contacted Kilroy to express her fascination and interest in the subject.
“Death is my biggest fear,” Young admitted. “So, I took the class, initially, to conquer that fear. Rebecca’s pitch for the magazine just sounded like a really good outlet to explore that. So, I reached back out to her and we started meeting up once a week for … a few months before we put out the call for submissions.”
From their first meeting, Young and Kilroy began fleshing out the idea of the new literary magazine. Both took on the roles of editor-in-chief and created social media pages where they posted a request for volunteers to read any submissions they may receive in the future. In the end, they obtained 18 people who gave their time and dedication to reading poems, short stories and more over the next few months.
“Surprisingly, [volunteers came] from all over the world. We have a reader in Switzerland, Puerto Rico [and] Spain,” Kilroy said. “We did not expect that kind of reach, but they all read our submissions and gave feedback on them and helped us decide what ended up in the final [copy].”
Young emphasized that she was also amazed by the response, especially since both she and Kilroy are college students who were struggling to begin a literary magazine. However, both were pleasantly surprised at the amount of support given.
Along with having readers from various corners of the world, the people who submitted work for the first issue were also from a variety of career fields and expertise. One submitter is a well-established, published author who donated their time to helping Kilroy and Young build the foundation of the first issue. In addition, some authors work in the medical field, such as hospice nurses, palliative care doctors and even one who runs a palliative care hospital in Texas. All of these writers submitted work that fit in the theme for the first publication.
For the first issue of “Thanatos,” Young and Kilroy asked broadly for anything about death, especially if it fell under the realm of the Death Positive Movement. As the submission period met its end, the magazine received a total of about 65 submissions. In reviewing these works, the theme evolved into addressing one’s own mortality.
“One of my favorite pieces from this issue is called ‘An Ongoing Conversation’ [by Carlin Wednesday] and it’s about … the speaker and their mother talking about what they want to have happen with their bodies when they die, and the mother wants to turn into a bamboo plant,” Kilroy described. “Those are the kinds of conversations that people should be having more of with their loved ones.”
“Thanatos” also received a lot of submissions about grief and grieving. Kilroy admitted that, although they fit the broad theme, these were not the works that they wanted to use in their first issue, since it was the launching point of the magazine. Instead, they wanted to focus on the idea of death positivity.
“It was really hard to draft those rejection emails because you just want to include them all, but some of them either didn’t fit the theme or were inappropriate for the theme itself or [the] content,” Young explained.
However, one of Young and Kilroy’s main goals with the magazine is to feature voices that desire to discuss all aspects of death. With this aspiration at the forefront of their minds, the two editors-in-chief decided that their next issue will feature these types of stories.
“We’re planning shortly, probably in the next month, to announce [a] submission window for a spring special issue on grief and grieving which we already have some of the pieces for. … Hopefully that issue would come out in March or April,” Kilroy said.
Although it was not without its challenges, Kilroy and Young are excited about the journal’s future and are proud of the work they have contributed. They described it as a rewarding experience and one that they are excited to expand upon and continue to grow.
“To share these voices,” Young commented, “I think that was the most rewarding part because [of] all the hard work we put into it, the planning [of] the website design, reading all the submissions, ranking them, choosing them. All of that hard work leading up to an actual issue is just amazing.”
“I think, for me, the most exciting and rewarding part has been the community that we’ve built through our readers,” Kilroy added. “And [through] contributors and social media because it’s so widespread and there are so many incredibly talented people who are part of it.”
Kilroy and Young hope to expand this community that they have begun to build in the future by adding more people to their staff, including people to help coordinate their social media accounts, like their Instagram @thanatos_review, or their website www.thanatosreview.com. In addition, they hope to obtain more volunteers to read submissions. This will assist them in making their literary magazine run more smoothly and become a biannual publication, publishing in the spring and fall.
Both writers encourage anyone who is hoping to get their work published or start a literary magazine as well to simply take the first step.
“I would say don’t be afraid of rejection and just put yourself out there because, for every rejection you get, you will get [an approval],” Young recommended. “It will happen, you’ve just got to keep putting yourself out there. Keep working on it. I would encourage anyone to do it, [especially] if it’s something you’re really passionate [about].”
“Even though there are a lot [of literary magazines] out there, if you have an idea that you don’t see represented, then go for it,” Kilroy concluded. “If you see kind of a niche that’s not being filled, … you will probably find people who want to help you fill it.”