Catch The Drift

The Drift is a new quarterly US magazine of culture and politics, which following a successful first year is now available in print as well as digitally. The Drift has been recommended by The New York Times and The Washington Post, and the current issue featured an essay on the tyranny of logistics, an investigation into Covid behind bars, as well as an interview with Samuel Moyn and fiction by Hannah Gold.

The aim of the magazine is to introduce new work and ideas by young writers who haven’t yet been, ‘absorbed into the media hivemind and don’t feel hemmed in by the boundaries of the existing discourse’.

The editorial team, led by Kiara Barrow and Rebecca Panovka want socially engaged cultural criticism and class-sensitive analysis; ‘pieces that point out what’s being avoided or talked around in politics, media, arts’, as well as ‘upbeat cynicism; un-selfserious screeds; generous takedowns’ plus fiction and poetry.

Payment is reported to range between $300 and $500 per piece, and you can pitch the editors at editors@thedriftmag.com. Let them know what you’d like to write about, but do not send draft essays. If you are submitting fiction or poetry attach it as a doc file with your name in the document title.

You can send enquiries to the above email address, but note they aren’t interested in ‘anything that toes a party line’, or any of the following (and this is just a selection); highbrow name-dropping; longform reviews narrowly focused on a single book or movie; finger wagging; your love life, quarantine diaries; Twitter feuds; whatever’s on Netflix; baking; cultural appropriation; wellness; David Foster Wallace; consumer guilt; the political and psychological effects of social media; millennials and sex; lifestyle choices; freedom.

Be sure to read the full guidelines at www.thedriftmag.com/about/