Insider: American Chordata

Their first issue is shortlisted for Launch of the Year and Best Original Fiction in the Stack Awards at the end of this month, so expectations are high for the second issue of American Chordata.

Here’s the Brooklyn-based duo, editor Ben Yarling and Art Director Bobby Doherty, with a sneak peek at their upcoming issue and an insider’s look into the process of making it.

In the making of this issue we…

Read
Ben: We got hundreds of incredible fiction, poetry and essay submissions for the second issue, so it was really gratifying to read those. I also read Nora Webster by Colm Tóibín, The Beauty of the Husband by Anne Carson, Ruth Jamieson’s wonderful book Print is Dead. Long Live Print, bits of Barthes’ Camera Lucida (I’m trying to get better-versed in art crit. so I can have more informed initial responses to the work Bobby finds than just, like, “Whoah, so good!”), and Eve Sedgwick’s essay “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading”, which was recommended to me by our poetry editor, Zach, and is partly the basis of my opening editorial note in this issue. I’ve also read a lot of great magazines recently (The Happy Reader, Éirways, The Great Discontent, Elephant… )

Bobby: Well, after the editors chose all the pieces in the issue I read them. Most of them. Almost all of them.

Watched
Ben: An irresponsible number of things, including but not limited to all currently available episodes of Scream Queens and The Walking Dead.

Bobby: My life slowly pass before my eyes.

Got sidetracked by
Ben: Too many things! A two-week trip to Ireland for my sister’s wedding, and in preparation for that obsessively rehearsing this really nice Balmorhea song “Baleen Morning“, which she sweetly asked me and a friend to play for her walk down the aisle (high stakes!) Various things that came along with trying to get our first issue out into the world, like making this video for the Printout Literary Special in London last month.

Bobby: At some point I wanted to find a bunch of computer-generated food art to illustrate a story. The hyperreal kind of stuff they use to advertise chocolate milk. Hours of research ended in me almost filling out an application to a two-year computer design course.

Made sure that
Ben: That we finally got the business end of the magazine in working order, and that the content of issue two would be an improvement and expansion upon (by including nonfiction essays, for example) the precedent of the first issue.

Bobby: Had to make sure that none of the photos we published were iPhone photos because I accidentally requested a bunch of iPhone photos. (We’re still publishing a few iPhone photos.)

Learned
Ben:  That there is never enough time, that shipping expenses are wildly more substantial than I anticipated before we put out the first issue, that people will want our print editions even though we give away the PDF edition for free.

I also learned, after the hundredth missed tagging opportunity, that we can’t justifiably continue to avoid a formal social media presence. We’ve held off because it takes so much time and energy, which are our scarcest resources at the moment, to maintain in a way that conveys a sense of on-voice alive-and-wellness and actually offers something worthwhile to followers. But we have an Instagram now, and the beginnings of a Facebook page. I’m completely bewildered and overwhelmed by Twitter, but others on staff are pretty savvy with it so that day is probably coming, too.

Bobby: Finding art for the cover was difficult because a second issue kind of sets a style precedent. You make a lot of visual rules in a second issue. It’s good to let me learn them and then completely change them.

Worked from
Ben: My apartment. My midtown office after business hours. This vibey cafe/bar near my apartment called Sunrise/Sunset. Molasses Books, where we had the launch party for the first issue. I did a ton of submission reading at Bobby’s apartment in Stuyvesant Heights one week when I was cat-sitting for him.

Bobby: My studio in New York magazine’s offices. My phone. The deepest depths of the internet. I was on blogspots.

Lost sleep over
Ben: Oh, everything. We run this magazine on nights and weekends, so…

Bobby: It’s just a literary magazine, I sleep great!

Were excited about
Ben:  The volume of quality submissions people sent us. There was so much amazing writing to read! Which also meant that it was really hard to decide on things when the time came for that. We had to turn down some stories and poems that I really, really loved. But that’s exciting, too, to have that opportunity to make those tough decisions. Because it means we were able to fill this issue with work that we feel really, really strongly about.

Bobby: The launch party :))). It feels good to see strangers looking at this thing you just worked so hard on.

Most pleased with
Ben:  I’m so, so happy about the writing in this issue. But also, as with our first issue, it was incredibly rewarding this time to sit down with Bobby’s art and photography selections. Not only because I think the work he found is just, like, stunningly good at face value, but also because in this almost cosmic way it so readily fit into meaningful conversations with the writing. That happened in compiling the first issue, too, but this issue is substantially longer and there was a lot more to work with, and I’m really pleased with the result.

Bobby: I think we’ve got good colours.

And everyone should buy a copy because
Ben:  I know I have a vested interest, but even just on a very honest personal level I think the writing and poetry in this issue is movingly good. I hope people will be as excited to read it as we were. It includes two nonfiction essays, which is something we didn’t have in the first issue that adds a nice tonal and formal counterpoint. And of course we’d love for people to buy it because it’ll help us ensure that the work of these contributors continues to reach the readership I really think it deserves.

Speaking of which: Pleased to report that issue two is now officially available for pre-order in our web shop, here.

Bobby: You don’t own an iPad and reading it irl is the best way.

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