The Stack Awards: the shortlists

This post has to begin with a couple of admissions.

Firstly, this post was supposed to go up yesterday – by now I really should know that EVERYTHING takes longer than I expect, but it still takes me by surprise.

And secondly, some of these shortlists look more like longlists, but there’s a good reason for that. In the end we had 179 entries to the first ever Stack Awards, with some categories becoming particularly crowded (Magazine of the year received a massive 52 entries).

We’ve spent the last week deliberating over some absolutely fantastic independent magazines and boiling them down to the lists that should go on to the judges, but it’s been HARD.

So hard, in fact, that we’ve allowed our numbers to swell a little. That’s why Magazine of the year, originally intended to be 10 titles, has expanded to 15, while Launch of the year, also originally intended as 10, has grown to 11. (It sounds ridiculous, but we just couldn’t get rid of that last magazine!)

Thanks very much to all the publishers who showed their support for these new awards by entering their magazines. Unfortunately the nature of awards means that some titles don’t make the cut, and I’ll say again that we genuinely agonised over which ones to keep in the process.

If you’re interested, you can read more about my thinking for the awards and the process itself over on Medium, but for now, without further ado, here are the shortlists for the Stack Awards 2015:

Magazine of the year
Benji Knewman (Riga)
Boat (Los Angeles)
Brutal (New York)
Buffalo Zine (London)
Delayed Gratification (London)
Flaneur (Berlin)
The Gourmand (London)
The Happy Reader (London)
Hole & Corner (Dorset)
Makeshift (New York)
Mondial (London)
The Outpost (Beirut)
Perdiz (Barcelona)
The Travel Almanac (Berlin)
Twin (London)

Launch of the year
American Chordata (New York)
Artefact (London)
Artenol (New York)
Benji Knewman (Riga)
Fathers (Warsaw)
Fiera (London)
Hayo (Vancouver)
NOUA (Moldova)
Salvage (London)
The Smart View (Hamburg)
Weapons of Reason (London)

Cover of the year
A New Type of Imprint (Oslo)
Artefact (London)
Avaunt (London)
Berlin Quarterly (Berlin)
Cercle (Strasbourg)
Eye (London)
Gather Journal (New York)
The Gourmand (London)
Gratuitous Type (New York)
Guts (Dublin)
Gym Class (London)
Hole & Corner (Dorset)
Intern (Manchester)
Like the Wind (London)
Makeshift (New York)
Mondial (London)
Nous (Manchester)
Port (London)
The Recorder (London)
Teeth (New York)

Best use of photography
Boat (Los Angeles)
Brewster (New South Wales)
The Collective Quarterly (West Virginia)
Eye (London)
Feelings (Paris)
Four & Sons (Victoria)
Gather Journal (New York)
Pet People (Gothenburg)
Sidetracked (Worcester)
Victory (New York)

Best use of illustration
Amuseum (London)
Buffalo Zine (London)
Guts (Dublin)
Hot Rum Cow (Edinburgh)
Little White Lies (London)
The Ride Journal (London)
Shelf Heroes (London)
Spring (Hamburg)
Stadtlichh (Hamburg)
Weapons of Reason (London)

Best original fiction
American Chordata (New York)
Amuseum (London)
Berlin Quarterly (Berlin)
The Eighty-Eight (London)
Firewords (Durham)
Structo (Cumbria)

Best original non-fiction
Boat (Los Angeles)
Delayed Gratification (London)
Fool (Malmo)
Future Perfect (New South Wales)
The Lifted Brow (Victoria)
Makeshift (New York)
Postr (Ghent)
Sidetracked (Worcester)
Victory (New York)
Works That Work (The Hague)

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That’s a LOT of reading. Sign up to Stack and we’ll send you a much more manageable one magazine every month, and use the code AWARDS2015 and we’ll knock 10% off our regular prices