Montréal what?!
Serai needs your support
Montréal Serai is a progressive, non-profit, arts-culture-politics webzine founded on alternative perspectives that transcend and challenge mainstream concerns. Over its 35-year existence, Montréal Serai has gone from a primarily Montréal-based print journal to a digital magazine with a national and international audience of readers, hungry for critical writing.
You can donate to Montreal Serai here, using Paypal.
Did you know?
- Montréal Serai provides a safe and welcoming space where a diversity of writers (emerging and established), artists, cultural workers, volunteers, readers and benefactors converge and engage in a veritable masala of cultures, identities and personalities.
- Montréal Serai features a unique profusion of thought-provoking content, including fiction, non-fiction, poetry, art and reviews of film, music, exhibits, theatre and dance.
- Over 400 contributors from around the world have shared their work through the Montréal Serai
- In a typical year, the webzine receives nearly 2 million visits (hits) from readers looking for a taste of something new (and linger longer than the average dwell time for most mainstream magazines).
- After an initial period driven by the goodwill of contributors and other volunteers, Montréal Serai has been providing modest compensation to writers and administrative staff with the help of small grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and donations from supporters like yourselves.
The recipe!
The Montréal Serai masala mix is based on three key ingredients: people, content and resources.
People: A handful of passionate and determined writers, activists and community organizers come together year after year to produce Montréal Serai. As the founding generation gradually eases back, a new generation of writers, contributors and supporters is stepping up to the plate, bringing with it a passion for keeping the flame alive.
Content: Montreal Serai has established a strong reputation that continues to attract talented contributors unswayed by commercial or partisan interests, who navigate with readers as they review and challenge contemporary social, cultural and political norms.
Resources: Montreal Serai does not receive money from investors, shareholders or major financial backers. Public funding continues to dwindle, to the point where the future of Montréal Serai is difficult to assure under current conditions.
We need your help!
You can help us carry on mixing the Montréal Serai masala into the future by contributing a pinch of your favourite spice:
Black pepper: $ 25
Cardamom: $ 50
Cinnamon: $ 100
Cloves: $ 250
Coriander: $ 500
Cumin: $ 1,000
Nutmeg: $ You set the amount!
When you make a donation to Montréal Serai, your support:
- gives space to voices that are too often ignored, unheard or silenced by mainstream media;
- helps readers find meaning in a context of continuous social, political and cultural change and uncertainty;
- ensures that Montréal Serai continues to provide ground-breaking content as we move forward.
We thank you sincerely for your support. All contributions are welcome.
You can send an e-transfer to serai.editor@gmail.com or make your donation via Paypal (using the Donate button here and on our website). Or you can send a cheque made out to Montréal Serai to:
Box 72, Succursale NDG
Montréal, Québec, Canada H4A 3P4
Thank you for adding your spice to the Serai mix.
The Montréal Serai team
You can donate to Montreal Serai here, using Paypal.
Since 2010, Montreal Serai has been publishing my poems and paying me for them. Political poems, feminist poems, lyric poems. Poems about writing poems, about being a tourist in Israel, about Montreal, the city in which I was born.
And I have read Montreal Serai's editorials, reviews, musings, and all the other poets' poems. Montreal Serai: it has been a pleasure.
Louise Carson
Montreal poet and writer
Your latest issue is fantastic. The entire content is thought provoking.
W. Brandon Lacy
Community activist from Minnesota
Just a note to say that I liked and appreciated this thoughtful article extremely. I keep hoping that if alternative media in other countries keep plugging away, a more accurate picture of American foreign policies since WW2 might finally make it into mainstream American media.
Rose Lovell-Smith
English teacher from New Zealand
Montreal Serai is one of the best online magazines, indeed. I was always pleasantly surprised by interesting articles and high professional level of this issue…
I feel proud to be the part of your great magazine…. I can imagine, how it's hard to run Serai. I wish you a lot of energy, don't give up, I do believe in your passion and fortune.
Oleg Dergachov
Award winning Montreal artist and cartoonist
I was delighted to be published in Montréal Serai because of the beauty of its graphics and layout, the quality of its content and the integrity of its editorial perspective.
It is a wonderful on-line magazine.
Jim Olwell
Poet, writer
Montreal Serai presents a high literary standard and a courageous venue for unconventional ideas, both in one. I have been happy to both read Serai and proud to contribute to it over the years. I believe it has been making, and continues to make, a difference and hope it will continue to exist many years into the future.
Ehab Lotayef
Montreal poet, writer and engineer and social activist
I encountered Montreal Serai a few years ago, when I moved to Montreal from Ottawa. It's tagline says: Bringing the margins to the centre. It is faithful to this mission, whose relevance has increased with time. I know it has a long and laudable three-decade long history, but I will confine myself to speaking to its present and recent past.
Full disclosure: I have contributed to MS several times and my short story collection (2013) and novel (2018) were also given space here. I have enjoyed working with the editorial team and found them supportive.
A webzine that publishes fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and reviews of film, music, art, exhibitions, theatre and dance, its editorial board picks 4 themes per year and weaves its issues around them, making place for other pieces as well. MS does not follow transient literary or artistic fashions, rather, it has a solid focus on what can broadly be termed as the socio-political sphere. The non-fiction pieces contain critical and reflective perspectives which are intelligent, and at times contain some theory, while remaining accessible to a range of readers. There's often a personal note. I like it that MS is not just text-oriented. The pieces are illustrated with arresting visuals. And MS features the work of a couple of visual artists every issue.
MS contributors come from diverse backgrounds and bring care and courage to their work.
I believe Montreal Serai plays an important role on the Canadian cultural landscape. (It has an international readership.) While staying its course, as mentioned above, it remains open to new ideas and engagements. This includes going bilingual (English-French).
Veena Gokhale
I have enjoyed reading the Montreal Serai for more than a decade and its diversity of essays on literature, art, politics and books reviewed has an international reach that keeps getting stronger. As a local freelance contributor over the years, I have found Rana Bose and the editorial team to be very open minded to articles and materials that compliment theme issues. It has been a stimulating experience both to read and to write for the Montreal Serai which has never looked better.....
Anne Cimon
Writer, Montreal
Thank you for running a thought-provoking journal that provides hours of intellectual pleasure
Uma Parameswaran
Writer, Professor of English Literature, novelist and playwright
Montreal Serai.....expressions of emotional rescues, outcries, bursts, creativities written into words ,....Montreal Serai...SSOOOOO MMMMUUUCCHHH RESPECT ...in framing perspective, contextualizing, researching, digging beyond and profoundly to seek, better understand, better survive and better make sense... ultimately to better the world. Kudos to Montreal Serai!!!!! I am a proud supporter, reader of Montreal Serai!!! I thank you profusely … the Montreal Serai team and the 100's of writers, contributors who wrote and provided refreshingly rad reflections for a mag that has been completely and freely available to all for over 3 decades!
Janet Lumb
Community organizer, facilitator, artist
The Editorial Board, Montreal Serai