Clem MacLeod was supposed to make a fashion magazine for her final project at Central Saint Martins. She made a literary one instead. Worms, launched in 2019, was meant to be a one-off — a publication about writers and their style, exploring the dress and communities of literary subcultures from the Beat Generation to contemporary transgressive fiction. Then Australian author Tilly Lawless asked to contribute to the next issue. There was no next issue. MacLeod made one anyway. And then another. By 2026, Worms has reached its eighth edition and grown from a student project into a publishing company that platforms underrepresented voices in literature.
The magazine sits at a peculiar and productive intersection: literature, fashion, identity, and feminism. Each issue is thematically driven — psychogeography, the elements, artists who write and writers who make art — and features a roster of contributors that ranges from established names like Chris Kraus, Eileen Myles, and Annie Ernaux to emerging poets and artists who might not have found a home elsewhere. MacLeod writes about reading and writing, and the recursive honesty of that position gives Worms its voice: intimate, curious, unintimidated by big ideas but never pretentious about them.
The community around the magazine has expanded into Compost Library, a program of literary events, and Seed Readers, which supports charitable literary and mental health organizations. MacLeod, who grew up in Sydney before moving to London at eighteen and spent four years working at the cult East London bookshop Donlon Books, runs the operation from a studio in Hoxton with the energy of someone who believes the literary world should be the opposite of highbrow and scary. Tate, The Face, and AnOther have all taken notice.
Stack Magazines described Worms as a publication where style means both writing style and sartorial style, and where clothes become another form of non-verbal language for understanding the self. For readers who think a black turtleneck is a literary statement and a Beat Generation reading list is a wardrobe essential, this magazine is already speaking their language.
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