OUR STORY

Who are we? What’s our story? Why? When? Where? How?!?!
Yeah we can answer all of those.
Berkeley Oblad and Lillie Redmond.
That’s it, thats us.
Just kidding!
We met in Vegas (which is home for both of us) just a couple years ago, where Lillie coaches club volleyball at Vegas Aces while finishing up school at UNLV. Berkeley’s little sister plays volleyball at the club Lillie coaches at and Berkeley used to play for the club director there, many years ago, so, long story short, the volleyball world is small and that’s what brought us together! Berkeley is still playing volleyball, following it all over the world.

We first connected over our love of books! The best way to make friends, in my opinion. We lended each other our favorites and gushed over the stories afterwards and continued to share new reads and favorite authors. We did this for a summer and then Berkeley left to go play volleyball in France and Lillie continued with school and coaching.

Living the Pro Volleyball life leaves you with big chunks of free time to fill so Berkeley was trying to keep that creative streak alive and stay busy during the downtime.
“Hi, Berkeley speaking, there is so many times while living overseas that I just wanted to quit and be done and go home and find another job, so while I was in one of those moments of hating the life I was living, I was brainstorming ways to work with my amazing creative friends back home and start our own business. Well, I wasn’t getting very far, but during my attempt to stay productive and creative, I was messing around with some creative writing and wasn’t brave enough to share it online anywhere, so I sent it to Lillie instead. Lillie is getting her degree in journalism, so she’s the writer of the two of us. Over the summer she had told me that she just wants to write more, she even has dreams to write a book one day. So, trying to be a supportive friend I sent her my stuff hoping she would find the time to write for herself and send me her stuff. We didn’t do very well with this. It happened maybe twice. We needed something more concrete to work towards so the business thinking came back.
I should mention I have a degree in Graphic Design and absolutely love it, and during my time in school fell in love with editorial design and zines. Zines are, well, hard to explain. According to this website “the word zine has come to represent a range of small-batch, DIY, “magazine-like” publications in terms of form and content.” Zines are supposed to be handmade and quickly put together, but most importantly there are no rules. I decided I realllly reallllly really liked that. I wasn’t quite ready for a magazine but a zine was a good starting place. I couldn’t be wrong. I brought this idea to Lillie. I told her we could make our own zine, I’ll design it and she can write for it, and we can both do a little bit of the other’s creative “thing” just to make it fun and push our individual boundaries of creativity. We started brainstorming what to call this zine and what we want it to be about and the over arching “why” of this publication.
Several years ago I saw this quote that said “you have to start romanticizing your life” I don’t know who said it, but I loved it and told Lillie I want to do that with this project. What that looks like, I’m not sure, but I want to do that. So the focus became romantics and through some google searches and thesauruses we stumbled upon the word Quixotic, meaning extravagantly romantic. And we fell in love with the word and its meaning and the ideas it gave us.”

That is where it all started and the long process of beginning. Most of the first issue was conceived over FaceTime and across a nine hour time difference. Lots of late nights and early mornings. As we brainstormed and grew this passion project we decided we wanted to open it up to other people just like us who want a creative outlet. We wanted other artists and writers to be able to submit their work, anonymously or not, so everyone has that opportunity to use their creative side even if their everyday life doesn’t ask that of them or in the way they like. We also always want to share our favorite books and give and take book recommendations, since that is what started our beautiful friendship we hope to make more that way as well. We dream of seeing this zine on a shelf at Urban Outfitters or Free People, and maybe one day on the magazine racks at Barnes and Noble, but for now on this website and instagram is a pretty good start! Did we mention we have a playlist for every issue?! Well we do. We want to incorporate as many creative outlets as possible.

Write. Photograph. Paint. Create.
Our motto for everything.

We would love to hear from you! Hear about your creative endeavors and favorite books, songs, artists, all of that.

Start romanticizing your life, and you’ll be surprised by what you find.

Lillie and Berkeley