Stack Magazines

Zweikommasieben is the Swiss magazine that's obsessed with the contemporary musical moment. We delivered their 27th issue to Stack subscribers in August this year, and then the following month we invited everyone to join us for a conversation that digs into the details behind the making of the magazine. It was great to catch up with them, and to hear them reflecting on what it means to have spent 12 years trying to capture the present.

Recorded live on Tuesday 10th October at The Scrandit in Bristol, this podcast episode features four independent publishers speaking about the challenges and opportunities of combining left-wing politics and print. The conversation was moderated by Eliz Mizon, strategy lead for The Bristol Cable, and it featured Max Jeffrey, art director of Stir to Action, Erin Mathias, editor of The Paper, and Phil Wrigglesworth, editor and art director of Left Cultures.

I dropped into the Magculture shop in Clerkenwell to speak with founder Jeremy Leslie ahead of next month's Magculture Live event. This will be their 10th year of the London-based conference (they also run it in New York) and it was really interesting to hear his thoughts on the last decade of running the event, as well as the general state of magazine publishing at the moment. We also took the opportunity to geek out over some favourite new titles, running through a few of the magazines that have caught our eye recently.

Osman Bari is founder, editor and designer of Chutney, a magazine that provides a platform for underrepresented voices to tell stories about cultural identity, colonialism and migration. We met up to speak about his ideas behind the magazine, the influence of food on the title, and his own changing status of settler and immigrant, and how being in London affected the stories he wanted to tell.

Recorded in August 2023 for our Stack Magazine Club, this conversation with editors Aliza Abarbanel and Tanya Bush explores Cake Zine, the magazine we delivered to our subscribers in July 2023. Telling the story of the literary food magazine so far, they explain how they started in the pandemic with their Sexy Cake issue, then released Wicked Cake in time for Hallowe'en last year, before switching to Humble Pie for this third issue.

The first issue of Te was published in 2021 and it caught my eye because it seemed to be doing something clever with food publishing: Its stories are about the different ways that ingredients can travel around the world, or the different values and associations that might be attributed to particular dishes, and so the whole thing seemed to be using the conventions of a food magazine as a sort of Trojan horse for telling stories about people and cultural anthropology. I assumed the second issue would use food in a similar way, but when I picked it up I realised that this was no longer a magazine about food, and the focus had switched to sound. Intrigued by the change, I spoke with founder and editor Michael Guo to hear about his thinking behind the project.

Recorded at Indiecon in Hamburg, editors Vasudhaa Narayanan and Tarini Sethi speak about The Irregular Times, their playful and provocative newspaper dedicated to platforming the creative work and everyday activities of people of colour across India and beyond.

Recorded live at Indiecon 2023, hear from the team at Solomiya, the extraordinary magazine made by young people in Ukraine who are documenting and coming to terms with what it means to be at war. I’m a huge fan of what the team are doing with this magazine – I note in my introduction that I’ve never seen a magazine like this being made by people who are at war, and that’s a large part of what makes it so extraordinary. But it’s also skilfully made, thrillingly creative and often painfully honest, making it an absolute must-read.

Recorded live at Issues in San Francisco on Saturday 5th November, hear Anja Charbonneau (Broccoli), Victor Gonzalez (Gross) and Michael Ray (Zoetrope) discussing their work publishing independent magazines on the West Coast of the USA.

Recorded at our Independent Magazine Fair on Saturday 14th May, this episode of the Stack podcast focuses on the independent magazine makers that are trying to change the world for the better. Evar Hussayni, senior editor of Azeema; Ellie Jackson, editor of The Movement Movement; and Nina Carter, co-creative director of It's Freezing in LA! all speak about what they do and why it matters.