The Offing 2.0
A Message From Editor in Chief Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
This past spring, The Offing announced some significant changes in its leadership and a summer slow down. Over the summer, the entire staff put in significant effort to talk within departments about what we want this publication to be and how we can make it sustainable. This week, as the Fall Equinox arrives, we are transitioning back into a more regular rhythm, one that is collaboratively designed to be more sustainable for everyone involved than what was described in Casey Rocheteau’s essay, Literary Juneteenth (or Why I Left The Offing). The work of doing better is not over, but it has begun.
Readers will notice some changes. Most noticeable perhaps is the altered schedule, with some departments publishing less frequently until we can sustainably do more. We have also retired Dead Letter Office as an active department, although all of the work curated for it remains available. Meanwhile, our new science department, now named Back of the Envelope, will be debuting its first piece in a few weeks. Editors Arianne Shahvisi and Mark Zastrow are also working on introduction to the department, to appear here on Medium. The entire schedule is available on our About page.
We will also be introducing a Patreon campaign this week, in time to coincide with another Mahogany L. Browne-organized live poetry extravaganza for our readers, supporters, and contributors in New York, on September 22. It is my misfortune that I can’t be there, but I do invite everyone in and about New York to attend this free event. I’d like to thank Insurgent Poets Society and #DecolonizeThisPlace who are donating their time and money to put on this event, which will not only raise funds for The Offing but also feature voices that are needed the most in this time of hope, struggle, and terror.
Whether or not you can attend, I hope you will consider helping The Offing continue to publish boundary pushing work by becoming a Patreon donor. Keep an eye out on social media for a link later this week. [9/22/2016 UPDATE: The Patreon is now live! Please join us as a monthly sustainer. No amount will be turned away.]
On a more personal note, I thank The Offing’s current and former staff for welcoming me, encouraging me and being patient with me as I learned the ropes and of course made mistakes. I am especially grateful that so many editors were responsive to the urgency of addressing #BlackLivesMatter. While in my professional scientific community the relevance of this movement is still a topic for debate, The Offing staff was unified in its commitment to saying again and again: Black Lives Matter.
Ultimately, I am aware that when Airea Matthews called me and asked if I would be interested in this position, she was doing something unusual and for many, something surprising. I intend as Editor in Chief to work with our phenomenal content curators to follow in her footsteps of imagining new boundaries of who and what constitutes the literary. I look forward to readers and contributors joining us in this work. And I appreciate how the community around us has kept us on our toes. For example, Shannon Barber wrote a fantastic four part series over the summer that I found myself nodding my head to a lot: Stop Saying Diversity (2, 3, 4, tip Shannon). I encourage everyone to read them. In general, I hope very much that we are becoming a space that people feel truly reflects the communities around us.
