Who really needs another literary journal? This was one of the incisive, provocative questions posed to Offing editors by estimable Washington Post critic Ron Charles, who deftly played devil’s advocate for the literary community, and offered us an opportunity to clarify our thoughts on the work we’re doing.
Our answer, in part:
We’d like to think The Offing isn’t duplicating the work of any magazine that currently exists. We’re intent on bringing something new to the table, on providing new avenues and exploring intersections that in the past have been overlooked — and hope that with new work and new approaches, we will be able to find new audiences. And, ultimately, we wouldn’t be doing this if we thought ‘the best that is being thought and written’ was all making its way to publication. We wouldn’t be doing it unless we felt able to provide a significant venue for significant voices.
The interview in its entirety can be found here.
If you’d like to learn more about who we are and what we hope to do, please take a look at the interviews that appeared recently in the Los Angeles Review of Books and the Los Angeles Times, at the letter from the editors that appeared in our inaugural issue, and at our mission statement.
So who needs another literary journal? We do — and we hope that you do, too.