In recent years, the magazine's staff has continuously diminished. Grant funding has shrunk. And the pandemic forced the magazine to pause its long tradition of in-person readings.
River Styx, which at its most steady pace published three times a year, has not released an issue since early 2021. It has three people on its board of directors.
All this instability causes board president Deborah Taffa to worry about the magazine's future.
"Please, someone care enough to take it over," Taffa says. She's the director of the creative writing MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Sante Fe, New Mexico, but she splits her time between Santa Fe and St. Louis. "I'm in Santa Fe now and can't believe such a venerable old magazine is being neglected."
The magazine has had three different editors-in-chief in the past six months. Author Jason Lee Brown left in December after serving as editor since November 2017. Interim editor Angela Mitchell took his place this January, but left a month and a half later. The magazine's managing editor Molly Harris left earlier this year as well.
Before joining River Styx's staff, Mitchell, an author based in St. Louis, knew River Styx as a literary "gem."
"It's a nationally recognized literary journal, especially in the realm of poetry," she says.
With this in mind, Mitchell says she was honored when asked to step in as interim editor. "It seemed it would be another good experience to add to my CV."
Her tenure didn't last long. Mitchell says the magazine ran out of money, and she "didn't know what to do." Fundraising has traditionally been the responsibility of River Styx's board, not the staff, according to previous staff members.
"We couldn't function," Mitchell says. "It takes money to run a journal. You're planning for the future — you know, the contests need to be advertised. You have to put out ads for poets and writers and all those things. We just kind of had come to a halt. ... I'm not made of money myself, so I felt like it was better to just step away."
After her departure in mid-March, writer and former River Styx managing editor Christina Chady took over as interim editor. In an email, Chady told the RFT she was hired on a temporary basis. Chady declined to be interviewed, as did Brown and Harris.
River Styx is definitely going through a slump, Shanie Latham says.
Latham worked for River Styx as a managing editor and volunteer from 2009 to 2013 and a volunteer editor from 2013 to 2017. She returned as managing editor again in 2018.
Upon her return, Latham says, "there was already a big difference" in the stability of the magazine. She's worked for River Styx on a volunteer basis for the past four years. A big part of why she has remained involved is because she is concerned about the magazine's future. She stepped down as managing editor in January 2021 but recently became the associate volunteer editor for the publication.
"I haven't really had as much time to devote to it as I would have wanted to, but I just didn't want it to die," Latham says.
Latham points to a decrease in grant funding as one factor in River Styx's lack of buoyancy.
"From 2009 to 2018, and even worse since then, grants have decreased significantly," she says.
Two organizations — the Regional Arts Commission and Missouri Arts Council — have been mainstays of River Styx's grant funding for decades, according to Latham. River Styx receives significantly less from both organizations compared to what it did in the early 2000s.
In 2008, River Styx received $19,000 from the Regional Arts Commission, according to Chloe Smith, the commission's grants and program manager.
By 2017, RAC started capping its program support grants at $15,000 as "funding cycles have changed over the years," Smith says. During the pandemic, RAC had to cut grants to organizations as funding decreased. For the 2020-2021 grant cycle, RAC awarded River Styx $4,800 — about 25 percent of its original award.
The most the Missouri Arts Council ever gave to River Styx was $19,000 in 2009, according to Executive Director Michael Donovan. The recession led to a decrease in funding to the arts council, and smaller grants.
"One year, we didn't get funding at all," Donovan says.
However, Donovan says the magazine's funding from the arts council has remained fairly consistent since 2014, with annual grants totalling between $10,000 and $11,000, though River Styx received even more than that in 2022. Federal COVID-19 relief money allowed the arts council to supplement River Styx's annual $11,000 grant with an additional $3,454, Donovan says.
Latham says grants have never been the majority of River Styx's funding, though any cut has a big impact on the magazine's small budget, which has only ever been between $60,000 to $80,000 annually, she explains. To lose thousands of that "really cuts the heart out of things," she says.
The magazine has always been independent and never under the gaze of a budget-slashing dean at a university. Previously a point of pride, independence has now become River Styx's Achilles' heel, as it requires the constant need to fundraise and hold events, both difficult tasks to accomplish during a pandemic and with a skeleton staff.
"That has always been a double-edged sword," Latham says of universities housing lit mags. "University journals usually have funding, staff, office space, et cetera. ... But they [could] have all of it pulled in a single decision that's completely out of their hands, if an administrator or board decides a literary journal is an easy cut to make as schools have to tighten budgets."
Still, times are desperate, and Taffa says she is seeking partnerships with local universities to house the magazine to make it more sustainable. What's left of River Styx's board and staff are trying their best to hold the magazine together.
The board has sought more private donors to keep River Styx afloat in recent years. One former board member donated $5,000 from her family's trust. Taffa's contacts at the Missouri Humanities Council gave the magazine an extra $1,000.
According to Taffa, a "fatal mistake" was shutting down the magazine's submissions page. At one point, it was open constantly for writers to submit their work for a small fee.
It was an ethical choice to close the submissions page, Taffa explains. The magazine didn't have an editor to help organize readers.
"There was no one to read the slush pile, and it's wrong to take money when no edition is coming," Taffa says.
When asked what she thought was in store for River Styx's future, Taffa simply replied, "I'm worried."
They need new blood: volunteers, board members, donors, a permanent editor.
"We need some fresh, young poets," Taffa adds. "We need the same excitement that we had in the time of Michael Castro, where people were getting together at a pub, and they were reading poetry. ... You know, going back to in-person stuff."
