About

Feral Feline is a literary magazine founded in April 2022 by Editor-in-Chief, Mary Binninger. In her senior year of college, she became the EIC of a student run, on-campus lit mag, Submissions Magazine, also known as Sub Mag. For her, a Creative Writing major, this was a dream come true— her first paid position at a magazine. Mary loved working with Sub Mag, but had to pass down the reins as she graduated in the spring. She loved being able to showcase all the amazing talent at her school in one publication, as well as create a safe space for people to share their work. As the semester started to come to an end, she thought, why not create my own lit mag? Mary then reached out to her closest writer and artist friends to ask them if they'd be interested in creating this magazine with her. 

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When Mary was thinking of names for this magazine, she wanted something that sounded pretty and cool but also kind of on the edge at the same time. She and her co-EIC's absolutely adore cats, and thus Feral Feline was born. She had recently read Kristen J. Sollée's book, Cat Call: Reclaiming the Feral Feminine, and was inspired by the blatant connection between women and cats— especially as a lover of both women and cats. With Feral Feline, Mary wanted to create a space where people could embrace the feral, untamed, nitty-gritty feminine, but also the beauty and tenderness of what it means to be feminine or femme.

 

As Sollée writes in the introduction of Cat Call: Reclaiming the Feral Feminine, "cats and women have been culturally inscribed with the same attributes for millennia. This enduring kinship between the feline and the feminine shows up in our mythologies that give goddesses feline faces and cat attendants. It's central to our stereotypes of the cat lady, the cougar, and the sex kitten, which populate a stifling spectrum between scorned singlehood and revered sex appeal. It's infused into our language: catty, pussy, kittenish are words deployed to pin down feminine behavior and female bodies through playful, provocative, and pejorative feline allegories. [...] 

 

At first glance, the feral feminine is a femininity that refuses domestication. See it in incisors that aren't ground down, a larynx that that unleashes too loudly, a sexual appetite that refuses to heel. To be feral is to be untamed, and to be feminine is to contain multitudes— which can, but doesn't always have to, involve various modes of creation, adornment, caretaking, and intuition. [...] Although the feral feminine originated with the association between woman and domestic cats, it is equally embodied by any feline (lions, tigers, lynxes, leopards, cheetahs...) and any person who might partake in feminine expression (cis and trans women and men, nonbinary femmes...). It may be many things, but it not bound to one kind of body."

 

With Feral Feline we hope to embody some of what Sollée describes and discusses in her book, as well as create a safe space for those who need it. We really hope that your work can find a home with us!

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