We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Julia Rios. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Julia below.
Alright, Julia thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
I started Worlds of Possibility in January of 2021, during a time when I had been ill for a year, and also was feeling down about the state of the world. I really wanted an infusion of hope, so I thought the best way to do that would be to call for other creatives to send me their hopeful works. I started with a small call to writers in a closed community, with plans to share one piece per month with my patrons. Over time that grew, and now Worlds of Possibility is a project with original art, poetry, and prose with digital magazine issues and a print anthology. All of it exists to give me hope, and to share that with everyone else while also paying the creative contributors for their work. All of these things are important to me.
Julia, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember, and I started editing as a teenager for my high school newspaper, but it wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I started doing either of these things professionally. I sold my first poem when I was 30, and began editing fiction when I was 33. My first editing work was for Strange Horizons, an online magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy. They’re a non-profit with an all volunteer staff, and I spent three years there learning a lot about how editing fiction works. Since then I’ve worked on several magazines and anthologies, including some that have won awards in my industry. I also do work for private clients. Some of my favorite projects include Mermaids Monthly, which I edited and co-published Meg Frank who is an artist and was also the art director. Mermaids Monthly was a yearlong project of stories poems and art all about merpeople. It was a delight to work with Meg and to focus so intensely on one topic for a year. My current projects are Worlds of Possibility, which is my own solo editing project about uplifting science fiction and fantasy, and Why Didn’t You Just Leave, an anthology of ghost stories I co-edited with horror writer Nadia Bulkin for Cursed Morsels Press. These two projects are very different! One exists to spread hope and joy, and the other is focused on examining the darkest depths of human experiences and emotions. I love both of them because I think all people contain multitudes. One thing all of my projects have in common is a commitment to holding space for different (and often underrepresented) voices. I also care about this in my own writing, which can explore and be inspired by things like my Mexican heritage or my experience of gender as a non-binary person.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
The most rewarding thing is when someone finds my work and feels connected to other people because of it. I’m very much an introvert who needs a lot of time alone, but I also crave connection and believe that humanity is built on networks of people, not rugged individuals. Every story I write and project I edit is a way of strengthening my connection to humanity as a whole. In December of 2023, I had the great honor of attending the FIL (a large book fair) in Guadalajara, and while I was there, I met so many people who were hungry for more stories that reflected their experiences of the world. Lots of people asked me for recommendations on where to find more stories about non-binary people, for example. Some people had not heard of that identity and were learning about it for the first time, while others said, “That’s me!'” Fiction can be an escape, but it can also be an inspiration, and a validation of self for the reader.
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
My projects are funded through Kickstarter and my Patreon. I first ran a Kickstarter with Meg Frank in 2020 to fund Mermaids Monthly, our yearlong mermaid project. We had both had some experience with Kickstarter before that for other projects, but never as the primary fundraiser. With that project, we combined our knowledge and also asked for help getting our campaign into shape from the publishing liaison at Kickstarter. We worked out the amount we’d need to run the project, and raised exactly enough. Since then, I have also run a solo Kickstarter to fund the Worlds of Possibility Anthology, and I also ran the Kickstarter for Why Didn’t You Just Leave together with Nadia Bulkin and the Cursed Morsels Press publisher, Eric Raglin.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.juliarios.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zomgjulia
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/julia.rios2
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-rios-99370915/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/omgjulia
- Other: https://www.patreon.com/juliarios
Image Credits
Worlds of Possibility cover art by Grace P. Fong