An invitation to write with us.

Most of what we publish arrives from writers we have never met. An essay comes in, an editor reads it, a note goes back, and somewhere in that exchange a working relationship begins without anyone having said hello. That is a strange way to do the work, and this fall we would like to try something else.

Beginning in September we are hosting three one-hour conversations over Zoom. Each is part introduction and part training: time to meet the editors and one another, and time to talk carefully about how an essay actually holds together. We are starting with three meetings and will see what they become.

You do not need to have written for us, and you do not need to be a member. If you have pitched an essay, whether or not we ran it, this is for you. If you have been meaning to pitch and have not yet done so, this is also for you. There is no application and no roster of prior contributors to belong to. Come to all three meetings or come to one.

Each meeting is built around a single essay we have published. We will point you to it beforehand. It runs about ten minutes of reading, and we ask that you come having read it. The conversation then takes up the ordinary questions an editor asks: what is this piece arguing, where does it earn the reader's attention, what would have made it stronger. Reading one published essay closely teaches more than a page of guidelines can, and it gives us something particular to talk about rather than generalities about good writing.

If the week gets away from you and you arrive without having read it, come anyway. We would rather have you in the room.