About | The Drift is a magazine of culture and politics
New! Quarterly! Criticism, features, fiction, and poetry!
The Drift aims to introduce new work and new 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.
In our first year, we’ve been recommended or aggregated in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, Bookforum, Longreads, Longform, Vox, Politico, and many other outlets.
Praise for our first issue:
“In these crisis-battered times, and amid an extensive trahison des clercs,The Drift incarnates a bracing new sensibility, as agile and mordant as it is intrepid.”
—Pankaj Mishra
“Gorgeous writing and maverick left political thinking—what more do you want from a magazine?”
—Wendy Brown
“A new generation’s memo—and a deservedly harsh one—to its elders.”
—Samuel Moyn
“The Drift introduces itself with maybe the most brilliantly acute, utterly devastating criticism of the self absorption of elite, liberal media ever written. It’s an essential document about the decadence of this American moment, one that includes Trump, but extends to even his ostensible enemies.”
—Richard Yeselson
“If The Drift lives up to its superb editors’ note introducing the magazine—one of the sharpest critiques I’ve seen of literary journalism’s narcissism—it has a very bright future indeed.”
—Adam Shatz
“I feel implicated by this but it’s terrific.”
—Michelle Goldberg
Masthead | It's our fault
Editors |
Kiara Barrow
Rebecca Panovka
Associate Editors |
Thayer Anderson
Brad Bolman
Elena Saavedra Buckley
Krithika Varagur
Mentions Editor |
Tarpley Hitt
Fiction Editor |
Emma Adler
Poetry Editor |
Marko Gluhaich
Art Director |
John Kazior
Contributing Editors |
Erik Baker
Marella Gayla
Jane Hu
Noah Kulwin
Simon Wu
Ege Yumusak
Designers |
Ezra Jude
Alessio Pretto
Researcher |
Julianne Arnold
Submit | Don't be shy
We want |
socially engaged cultural criticism; class-sensitive analysis; pieces that point out what’s being avoided or talked around in politics, media, arts, or even academia; upbeat cynicism; un-self-serious screeds; generous takedowns; entries from the margins; fiction; poetry; 1-3 sentence book/ movie/ TV/ art reviews.
We don't want |
anything that toes a party line (any party, any line); highbrow name-dropping; straightforward longform reviews narrowly focused on a single book or movie; dispatches from The Right Side of History; finger wagging; false binaries; anachronistic historical critiques; thoughts on Heidegger, Nietzsche, Foucault, [insert theory-bro icon here]; hot takes on the latest 24-hour Twitter scandal; term papers (or anything that could conceivably be turned in as a term paper); Marxist critiques culminating in statements about the base and superstructure; personal essays.
We're bored by |
your love life; quarantine diaries; Twitter feuds; whatever’s on Netflix; baking; cultural appropriation; woke Hollywood; the “meritocracy,” and ivory tower critiques of meritocracy; wellness; Harry Potter as political intertext; friendly brands; performative pessimism; girlbosses; refusing to read David Foster Wallace; David Foster Wallace; consumer guilt; the political and psychological effects of social media; millennials and sex; cable news; lifestyle choices; contemporary fiction; freedom.
Pitch us at |
[email protected]
Let us know what you’d like to write about in the body of an email. Unfortunately, we're not able to read essay drafts. Poetry or fiction should be sent in an attached Word document with the author’s name in the title. Use this form to pitch us on Mentions.
Contact | Say hi
Anything else |