Angel Food Magazine Launch
Sisters
Brooklyn, NYC
March 20, 2024
Here we continue documentation of the early 2020s NYC literary magazine boom. I was genuinely excited for this one, the launch of Angel Food Magazine at Sisters. Something about the editor-in-chief’s and the magazine’s presence online gave me no small hope that this publication would be going for something different, not only in the styles it favors but also the editors’ method of conducting themselves. Tweets that blend the usual millennial quirk with an unwavering self-seriousness, a mission centered on the supremacy of good writing, a commitment to a left-wing politics, and a design sensibility toward the simplistic, all boded well and piqued my anticipation.
I — very apparently — was not the only one! The little backroom at Sisters filled up fast, much to the obvious chagrin of the bartenders and wait staff who had to wade through a shouldering throng of young professionals. (This was by far the most “publishing insider” sort of crowd I’ve yet to see at one of these events.) It must be said, putting my own class affinities for service workers in the corner, that it truly is incredible to fill a room like this for the launch of the inaugural issue of a literary magazine. Was it a comfortable space and crowd to be in? Absolutely not. But admirable nonetheless to have built this much of a following with a product as of yet sight unseen.
The magazine launched online earlier that day to much praise and critique on Twitter. I wondered if perhaps the crowd was as big as it was on account of the Twitter beef that plagued my timeline during the hours leading up to the event, but this suspicion was quelled by the fact that RSVPs had been open for some time and that I didn’t recognize any of the personalities in the room, having rather recently come to know many faces and the handles that cover them. This crowd included Editor-in-Chief Miriam Gordis’ people, the angels, and the supportive friends of readers Kameel Mir, Joana Urtasun, Greta Rainbow, and Ali Banach.
I’m glad I asked Miriam for an email interview before the event. Mingling was impossible.
On the whys and wherefores of starting up a literary magazine when so many others have already cropped up, Miriam is optimistic that rising tides raise all boats: “I wanted to create a space that felt like a literary home for me and for the kinds of weird, idiosyncratic writing I often look for. There are a lot of new literary magazines, which I think is really exciting and hopefully promising for the future of literature. There’s no sense of scarcity to me — I don’t think there’s a dearth of good writing, and lots of good writers have trouble getting their foot in the door. A healthy literary culture to me is one where there are a lot of platforms and outlets.”
It’d be difficult for me to agree more with these sentiments — not only having covered several launches over the past few months, but also running my own magazine, becoming increasingly involved in the independent literature world, and constantly looking for a notch to carve out for my own novels and stories — the lifeblood of this thing is variety.
Miriam again: “The problem right now is that there is this widespread scarcity mindset, a lot of stinginess and austerity and stunting of creativity, which comes from corporations but also from literary institutions and from people fighting to survive. If I have a bugbear, it’s how narrow a vision many people have of what counts as serious and worthwhile writing.
“I’m also a writer and I like to try out different forms and styles and play around with my own work. I think before the internet and the kind of professionalization we have now it was easier in some ways for writers to do that because they didn’t get pigeonholed as easily. Now if you write personal essays or weird fiction, that becomes your thing.”
All discourse and Twitter feuds aside, Angel Food Magazine certainly has a vision, which on its own is enough. They’ve also got the support. They’re also avoiding the two things I’ve groaned about in my last launch reviews — exclusivity by way of the club and fine arts worlds. If the turnout at Sisters, chaotic as it was, is any indication of the demand for something like Angel Food, then it’s safe to say they’ve hit the nail on the head. See what you think: read the first issue here.
“We’re already working on our second issue and hope to continue growing,” Miriam said. “We’re developing a series of profiles and interviews, which my co-founder Sophia Kaufman is heading up, and have several lined up. We’re also working on eventual funding sources so that we can offer payment to our writers, which is our big priority right now.”
And, hell, God bless ‘em for it…
