About

What Happens is a magazine of poets' theater, edited by Bianca Rae Messinger and Toby Altman and designed by Peter Hopkins. The magazine arose from a festival, also called What Happens, founded in Iowa City in 2018 by Bianca, Toby, Erica Vannon, and Kristen Steenbeeke. We publish two issues a year of poetry and criticism organized around that most ephemeral, ill-defined, provisional of genres: poets' theater. All our issues are available for free as pdfs on this website. We also have print issues for sale, individually and by subscription.

Reviews

We welcome unsolicited reviews of book and chapbook-length works of poets’ theater. We are particularly interested in covering plays, poems, and performances that might be difficult to place in more traditional theater or poetry venues. We will consider reviews of any length and style, but our preference is for more substantial or experimental reviews which consider one or several works in depth, locating them in relation to their generic practices, their political commitments, and their performance history. Please send queries along with a brief bio to whathappenswhathappens@gmail.com for consideration.