Stack Magazines

Clem MacLeod, Caitlin McLoughlin, and P Eldridge are the editors behind Worms, the magazine that's dedicated to exploring the underground and surfacing the best writing, bringing it up, “to the literary topsoil”. In this conversation they talk about the recent changes they have made to the magazine, allowing them to keep on publishing the best work, while avoiding the pitfalls of binaries and simple definitions.

Emily Makere Broadmore is editor-in-chief of Folly journal, which she describes as a literary journal for people who don't buy literary journals. Online, the magazine calls itself, "The rebel child of the literary New Zealand scene," and, "The love child of a literary journal and a Victorian gossip rag," and I hope you'll enjoy hearing Emily's story of overcoming establishment criticism to create a fresh new literary voice for New Zealand.

Hear our panel from the Publishers Spring Meet, speaking about how to market a magazine

Vegetables and community in Rebel Roots by Stack Magazines

Obsession and All Things Measured magazine by Stack Magazines

Josh Jones is a serial magazine maker who has been editing and publishing for more than 20 years, making everything from small zine projects, to international arts and culture titles, to customer publications for big brands. He's a genuine font of knowledge and now he has published his own self-help book for anyone who wants to make their own magazine. I sat down with him to hear why making a magazine is not actually that hard, and why he advises people to just get started.

Ellen Freeman is the editor of Mildew, the secondhand fashion magazine that's based in Mexico, and which reflects on a whole world of vintage, recycled, and upcycled fashion and art. We delivered the second issue to Stack subscribers in November 2023, and the third issue came out at the end of last year, so I caught up with Ellen recently to find out what's happened in a year's worth of independent publishing, including the big change that has seen Mildew officially joining the Broccoli independent publishing empire.

The Lemming is an independent, anti-profit magazine that's made with a strong DIY ethos, and an even stronger sense of social justice and political activism. In this episode, creative director Gabriel Carr, editor Beth Jones, and political editor Joseph Conway speak about their commitment to telling the truth, rather than telling two sides of a story.

For the first Stack podcast episode of 2025 I spoke with creative director Alex Stevenson and editor-in-chief Chloe Hayman about Soft Stir, the Australian magazine that provides a space for emerging artists and writers to experiment and find their voice.

The second instalment of our podcasts looking back at the magazines we delivered to Stack subscribers in 2024, featuring Serviette (Toronto), Nobody (Berlin), The Fence (London), Get Familiar (Amsterdam) and Pleasant Place (Amsterdam).

We're taking stock of the magazines we delivered to subscribers in 2024. Hear from the editors, designers, and publishers who made Dirty Furniture, Desired Landscapes, Offal, Crude Futures, and A Shade Colder, the magazines we sent out from January to May this year.

Peter Kormanyos is a strategist for TBWA advertising agency in Amsterdam, and he has also published a strange and intriguing new magazine called Purgatory Sandwich. The launch edition is split into two separate issues, which are presented together in a brown paper sandwich bag, promising what it calls, “Experimental fuckaroundery for lunchbreaks”. It's gleefully weird and chaotic, and in this episode he speaks about the ideas behind his creative project.

Les Jones, Molly Campbell and Wilf Jones are the team behind Contemporary Collage Magazine, and they're also father, daughter and son. The magazine started as an online publication, but when readers said they wanted to read in print the team also added a real ink and paper version, and in this episode they speak about how they're running it as a financially sustainable family business.

Rob Orchard is one of the founders and editors of Delayed Gratification magazine, and one of the authors of Misc., a new book they published earlier this month. If you're a long-time listener to our podcast you might remember that I spoke to Rob three years ago, when the first Delayed Gratification book was published, and as you'll hear, Misc. has been shaped in large part by that experience. This new book is smaller, cheaper, and more deliberately created for people buying Christmas gifts, but none of that changes the fact that the book market is incredibly competitive and a really tough place to make money. Or as he puts it, “When you publish a book, you buy a ticket in a lottery”.

Magculture Live is coming up fast (Thursday 7th November, at the Vitsoe shop here in London) so I took the opportunity to sit down with Magculture founder Jeremy Leslie and have a long chat about magazine stuff. We spoke about some of the high-profile magazines, like Vice and The Onion, which have recently returned to print. We spoke about changes in magazine design trends, and the forces that can influence those decisions. And there was a lot of love for Richard Turley and his many print projects.

Nicolas Kemper is publisher of New York Review of Architecture, the big, two-colour, newsprint magazine that has become renowned for its long, critical, entertaining essays about architecture and the city. He gave the first talk of the weekend at this year's Indiecon and I loved his enthusiasm for all parts of publishing – not just the fun stuff like writing, editing, and throwing parties, but also what he calls, “building pipes”; making sure that things like their subscription management and contributor invoicing systems run as efficiently as possible. We're playing his Indiecon talk for this episode of the Stack podcast, so you can hear the story of how he and the team are building through their versions of the magazine.

Viêt and Jeremy Raider-Hoàng are the founders, editors and creative directors of No One, a new magazine that explores the queer nightlife of a different city each issue. It feels natural to marry the subjects of nightlife and queer culture, and you can tell there are big, serious ideas behind their impulse to document the hedonistic fun they see around them.

For this first episode of the new season I've got a conversation with Kat, the woman who makes Moan, a magazine of sensuality and eroticism that prioritises the female gaze. It has a lot of explicit imagery, but it's definitely not pornographic, and in fact there's something about the risograph print and production that makes it feel like more of an art book than anything else. Hear what she has learned from publishing the magazine for the last five years, and how she's planning on taking it to the next level.

Ellie Jackson is the editor-in-chief and creative director of The Movement Movement, the women's sports magazine that is committed to broadening our understanding of what sports coverage should look like. Issue one came out a few weeks ago, but that was preceded by issue zero, which came out in 2022, and in this episode she speaks about the delay between the two issues, and the struggle to stay on track when life gets in the way.

Steph Chung is managing partner at Racquet, the New York-based magazine that takes a fresh, anti-elitist look at the world of tennis. There have been some big changes since the last issue, with editor David Shaftel and art director Larry Buchanan both leaving the magazine, and a more commercial emphasis across the pages, with a big Gucci photo shoot on the cover and inside, and a partnership with Seoul-based cultural creators Ssoldot. It's all part of a plan to take advantage of what Steph calls, “the convening power of the magazine”, and in this conversation she outlines their plan for making it more commercially successful, while expanding further into events, merchandise, and other activities based around tennis.

Zuzana Kvetková is executive editor of Backstage Talks, the magazine that grew out of Bratislava's By Design Conference. Their new issue will be landing in shops very soon, and as she explains in this podcast, it marks something of a watershed. Because after 10 years they've decided that it's time to stop running the conference, which in turn prompts lots of questions about what the magazine should be.

Yuto Miyamoto is editor of Troublemakers, a new Tokyo-based interview magazine that fills its pages with ordinary people living variously extraordinary lives. It's a very personal magazine – he makes it with his wife, Manami Inoue, who is the art director, and interviewees are photographed at home, with lots of space dedicated to exploring their thoughts and beliefs. They're stretching the dictionary definition of 'troublemakers', and having some fun along the way.

Tom Rowley runs the Backstory bookshop in Balham in South London. He was previously a journalist for The Telegraph and The Economist, which he describes as his dream job, but when the pandemic knocked everything sideways he decided it was time to reassess and follow his other dream of running a bookshop. As he puts it, though, he felt the pull of ink in his veins, and started publishing Backstory magazine, which allows him to dig into the stories behind the stories in the books that he loves, reflecting on the experience of reading and writing.

Lucy Roeber is editor and publisher of the Erotic Review, a magazine that became particularly well known as a bimonthly title in the late 90s and early 2000s. It had since switched to publishing online and it was going to close altogether, and in this episode she tells how she set out to bring it back as a fully-fledged print magazine. In her hands it has become a lovely, thick literary magazine, aimed at an international readership and dedicated to reaching, “outside the embarrassed parameter” to explore the rich subject of desire.

Conor Foran is editor of Dysfluent, a magazine based on his experience of stammering, which aims to become a publication of stammering pride. Using a custom typeface with letters that get stretched out, or chopped up and repeated, Dysfluent aims to reflect the sound of a stammer, representing individuals' voices as closely as possible.

For the entire time I've worked in magazines, I've been told that print is dead. But what does that actually mean? And why has the idea endured for so long? I took a deep dive into the death of print to see if I could figure out what's going on, and what that means for the future of magazines and digital media.

Olivia Crandall and Elena Foraker are editors of Not Here to Make Friends, a lovely, thoughtful, almost scholarly journal about reality TV. In this episode, they speak about wanting to engage completely with their subject matter, embracing both the good and the bad, and using this much maligned television genre as a way of understanding what's going on in society more broadly.

Erin Rimmer and Simon Doherty are two of the founders of Roughcast, a brilliantly abrasive, punk-inspired magazine that's here to shake up what it calls the “dull pastiche” of British media. It's a passion project run by a group of friends, but it also has some big ideas about the way media works, particularly relating to freelancers, and the urgent need to find a way of publishing that doesn't depend on the routine exploitation of junior writers, photographers and artists.

Natassa Pappa is editor-in-chief and creative director of Desired Landscapes, the pocket-sized magazine that brings a fresh and philosophical perspective to travel writing. Natassa is based in Athens, but she was over in London recently for a talk at the Magculture shop, so we met up the following day and went for a walk on Hampstead Heath to talk about her radically subjective approach to travel.

Lina Fadel is one of the poetry editors at The Other Side of Hope, a magazine that centres around journeys in refugee and immigrant literature. It's partly a literary magazine and partly a community project, because as she explains in this episode, it's all about bringing people together and providing a platform for voices that wouldn't otherwise be heard.

"I was just hanging out with my algorithm and it got a little claustrophobic..." Daniela Rodriguez is editor-in-chief, designer and illustrator of Superstars Only, a brilliantly personal magazine that she makes with her boyfriend Adrian Tiu and a few close friends in New York. As you'll hear, Daniela is incredibly self-effacing and the magazine itself has a lovely lowbrow charm, but it's also really quite experimental and exciting, and I was interested to hear her describing the process she goes through in making an issue, and the special magic that she feels print brings to the project.

Recorded live at the Shifting Landscapes event in London on Saturday 2nd December, this conversation features Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, executive editor of Emergence, and Bram Broerse and Maurits Wouters, founders of Studio Airport and designers of Emergence. Emmanuel has been on the Stack podcast before speaking about making Emergence magazine at the meeting point of climate, environment, spirituality and humanity, and in this discussion we broaden the focus to encompass Emergence's podcasts, films, immersive exhibitions and more.

We don't have many business to business magazines on the Stack podcast, but I'm making an exception for the Grub Street Journal because it's a magazine about magazines, and while it's ostensibly a trade magazine for the print publishing industry, it takes great joy in playing around with the sort of editorial tone that other B2B publishers would never try. As you'll hear, publisher Peter Houston and editorial director Joanna Cummings have loads of experience working across a wide range of contract publishing and newsstand titles, and lots of love not just for magazines, but also the people who make them. "Magazine people are people too," Peter says at one point. "We're not just spreadsheets and KPIs and ad / editorial ratios."

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.

Recorded live at our Independent Magazine Fair on Saturday 14th May 2022, this panel discussion features advice from the unconventional magazine makers behind Real Review, A Profound Waste of Time and Paperboy.

Recorded at our Independent Magazine Fair, this panel discussion features expert advice from the people behind Delayed Gratification, Season Zine, and The Modernist.

Martha Dillon is editor of It's Freezing in LA!, the magazine about climate change that recently published its eighth issue, themed around ‘Borders'. I spoke to her a couple of weeks after COP26 came to an end and I was interested to hear her thoughts on the conference, as well as the wider climate change conversation and how greater interest in the subject is allowing them to be more ambitious in what they're doing.

"We miss having a tactile experience..." Platon Poulas is one of the people behind Dead Slow, a strange new magazine concept that we have in the Stack shop at the moment. He and his co-founder Anunaya Rajhans describe themselves as producers rather than editors, and that reflects the unusual format of the magazine, which is presented as a vinyl record, complete with a cardboard sleeve and sides A and B. In this conversation he explains the idea behind the vinyl references, and also his and Anunaya's desire to create a piece of printed ephemera that celebrates other forms of physical media.

"The world suddenly feels bigger again..." Nelson Ng is founder, editor and art director of Lost, a travel magazine based in Shanghai and published in both English and Mandarin. Of course the pandemic has made international travel much more problematic than it used to be, and that will inevitably have consequences for anyone making a travel magazine, but as you'll hear Nelson is pretty philosophical about the situation, and he speaks about how he thinks travel feels different these days, while also acknowledging that he expects it will be significantly harder to make his next issue.

"We've always loved analogue. We produce records, we make books, we do physical shows – it's part of who we are..." Sean Bidder is editor of Fact, the music and visual art magazine that was relaunched last year as a big, glossy, biannual publication. I spoke to Sean and Zak Kyes, founder of Zak Group and art director of the relaunch, to find out what brought Fact back to print, and how it fits in with the broader activities of publisher The Vinyl Factory.

"A book is different to a magazine – you've got more space. You can take more time..." Rob Orchard is one of the founders and editors of Delayed Gratification magazine, and now one of the authors of An Answer for Everything, their hardback book published by Bloomsbury. Infographics have always been a big part of what Delayed Gratification does, and the book really leans into that, with 200 ridiculously detailed, meticulously researched infographics set over 300-odd pages. In this conversation Rob explains how it was the uncertainty and disruption of the pandemic that finally took the book from being a loose set of ideas and turned it into a real actual thing you can go and buy in the shops, and also how the process of making the book alongside the magazine is the hardest thing they've ever done.

"A lot more love and care goes into it because it's in print..." Tom Preece is one of the founding editors of Yuck, the Manchester-based music magazine that released its fifth issue this summer. Publishing a music magazine is tough when nobody is allowed to go out and listen to live music, but now life is opening up more here in the UK and I was excited to hear how that's changing the scope of what Yuck can do, including planning for their first live event next month, and increasing the size and ambition of the magazine itself.