About Us

The Metaphysical Circus (formerly See the Elephant Magazine), launched in 2015. We are an online magazine of eclectic writing, art, and culture. We showcase work that is progressive, humane, metaphysical, mythic, visionary, absurd, and political. We are especially interested in work by women, people of color, indigenous, LGBTQ, and writers and artists from non-mainstream cultures. We are woman-owned and operated. Currently, due to the pandemic and other vicissitudes, we are not a paying market. We hope to resume payments to contributors in the future. Submissions are by invitation only. However, if we published your work in the past, you have a standing invitation to submit again.

The Editors

Melanie Lamaga is the founding editor of The Metaphysical Circus (formerly See the Elephant Magazine). Her short fiction has appeared in Fictional International, Zahir Magazine, UnCommon Origins: A Collection of Gods, Monsters, Nature, and Science (UnCommon Anthologies Book 2), and Parhelion, among others. Lamaga owns and operates an outdoor adventure lodge with her husband in Mexico, and spends her free time leading corporate team-building exercises, in which participants wear commedia dell’arte masks and tell their “truths” into funhouse mirrors.

M.C. Boyes is co-editor of the anthology, The Way We Work (Vanderbilt University Press). Her work has appeared in Fiction International, Rhino, Hawaii Pacific Review, Cake and Spoon River, among others. Boyes won the Tennessee Commission for the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship for fiction and is a Pushcart Prize Nominee. Boyes is an associate professor in the Honors College of Virginia Commonwealth University, and spends her free time weaving tiny baskets out of cat hair, and counseling clowns who’ve lost their nerve.