The Sick Muse is a collaborative effort to explore and expand the relationships that make music in Chicago. We publish an open submission-format zine that hovers around the motives, imagination, and labor in the DIY Chi. We document a particular time & place and present a forum for thinking forward. Each issue involves more than 25 contributors who submit essays, illustration, interviews, lyrics, photography, design, and poetry that pose the question of why and how they make art & music in Chicago. We publish as active participants in the worlds that we represent. We are committed to community-centered media. We believe in the power of print to demand deliberation and bring together diverse ideas and groups of people. We uphold a DIY ethos and celebrate it with beautiful graphic design and production.