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GROW UP FOREVER
GROW UP FORE
GROW UP FOREVER
Fourteen is an independent zine that focuses on stories about growing up, coming of age and nostalgia. We publish short stories, poetry, photography, art, teenage journal entries and personal essays. We work from the perspective that we never stop coming of age or growing up. While we accept submissions from people of all ages, we are particularly interested in work you created as a teenager in the 21st century. We accept work that has been published before if it was published a long time ago on a platform that's been lost to the internet sands of time.
The number 14 represents exploration of unknown territory. 14 is the age of Lux Lisbon in The Virgin Suicides. 14 is the title of our favourite Palma Violets song. 2014 was the year of the Tumblr aesthetic and we were part of the one of the first major online subcultures without realising it. We were 14 when Lana Del Rey released 'Born To Die' and when Tavi Gevinson launched Rookie. It's when our teenage years hit their stride. Emotions run high. No one understands. It feels as good to feel bad as it does to feel good.
It made us sad how many people deleted their old work. What was once everything to us had disappeared. Growing up meant refining our creativity, growing self-conscious, posting less, trying to be more professional online. It meant having less time to spend doodling in notebook margins at the back of maths class, less time photographing friends in the park on summer afternoons that felt like they'd last forever.
But we held onto this work, feeling a palpable sense of nostalgia whenever we revisit it. Teenage years are not the best years of your life. We only romanticised them to be able to deal with them. Memories might fit neatly into rectangular Polaroid frames and A4 journal pages, but they were messy around the edges.
We started Fourteen because we wanted a space to share all that romance and messiness. We wanted to carve out a corner of the internet where we could share the imperfection and melodrama again. Fourteen is a home for our 'bad' teenage art and nostalgic ramblings and an outlet for our more recent visual art and creative writing.
As teenagers online in the 2010s, creating and sharing art and writing had never been more immediate. We filled after school hours with blogging, journaling, zines and poetry. But internet content is ephemeral. When we grew up, we took a lot of our old work offline. Our 'bad' teenage poetry was no longer an expression of our true feelings of heartache and angst. It was just bad teenage poetry, obvious and embarrassing.
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