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Stack Magazines

Stack Magazineswww.stackmagazines.com
Conversations with independent publishers, telling the stories behind the stories in some of our favourite magazines.
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Episodes

Suffocating readers with The Paper

Erin Mathias, Oliver Gabe, and Owen Davies are the editors of The Paper, the big, funny, dark magazine from Wales. In this conversation they speak about their love of extreme contrasts, and why they don't give readers room to breathe.

Jul 25, 202539 min

Experimenting at Issues magazine shop

Nicola Hamilton is the founder of Issues, the Toronto magazine shop that opened in the city's West End in 2022. In this episode she speaks about her love for print, and how she's trying to find a better, more engaging way of bringing magazines into people's lives.

Jul 11, 202537 min

Expanding The Gentlewoman's world

Penny Martin is editor-in-chief of The Gentlewoman, the magazine celebrating, "modern women of style and purpose". In this conversation she speaks about her enthusiasm for creating 1995, a one-off magazine published to celebrate the 30th anniversary of designer shopping outlet Bicester Village. And she reflects on The Gentlewoman's own 15 years in print, and what it takes to keep the magazine on top after a decade and a half.

Jun 27, 202527 min

An experimental independent magazine show

Hear five independent magazines live on stage at the Queen of Hoxton in London. Featuring stories, essays and poetry read by The Fence, Real Review, Vittles, Offal and The Paper.

Jun 20, 20251 hr 49 min

Working-class arts in Grass magazine

Tommy Sissons is the editor of Grass, the magazine of working-class arts and literature that launched in 2020 and recently reached the milestone of its fifth issue. In this conversation he speaks about the definition of what the working class is these days; his belief that class isn't talked about enough; and his mission to showcase the next generation of writers and artists.

Jun 13, 202533 min

Broccoli magazine's new beginnings

Founder and editor Anja Charbonneau explains why she decided to stop publishing Broccoli magazine, and how that has enabled her to either launch or develop an exciting new slate of print titles

May 30, 202544 min

Worms magazine turns over a new leaf

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.

May 02, 202542 min

Folly journal is ruffling feathers

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.

Apr 11, 202530 min

How to market a magazine

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

Apr 04, 202557 min

Just Make Your Magazine

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.

Feb 21, 202531 min

New stories about old clothes

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 independ...

Feb 07, 202538 min

Resistance and bias in The Lemming

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.

Jan 24, 202540 min

Soft Stir platforms Australia's emerging artists

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.

Jan 10, 202532 min

2024 Roundup - Episode 2

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).

Dec 23, 202432 min

Stack in 2024 – part one

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.

Dec 13, 202437 min

Purgatory Sandwich and the enemies of creativity

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.

Nov 28, 202427 min

Building a family business with Contemporary Collage Magazine

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.

Nov 15, 202439 min

Making Misc. – the new book from Delayed Gratification

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 ...

Oct 31, 202436 min

The view from Magculture

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 projec...

Oct 18, 202434 min

New York Review Of Architecture is "building pipes"

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 co...

Oct 04, 202440 min

No One magazine explores queer nightlife

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.

Sep 20, 202432 min

Moan pictures the female gaze

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 ...

Sep 05, 202430 min

The Movement Movement expands sport

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.

Jul 26, 202432 min

A new spin on Racquet magazine

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...

Jul 12, 202425 min

The power of quitting in Backstage Talks

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.

Jun 28, 202426 min

Meeting misfits in Troublemakers

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.

Jun 14, 202426 min

When a bookshop makes a magazine

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, re...

May 31, 202429 min
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