About
A Public Space is an independent nonprofit publisher of an eponymous award-winning literary, arts, and culture magazine, and A Public Space Books. Under the direction of founding editor Brigid Hughes since 2006, it has been our mission to seek out overlooked and unclassifiable work, and to publish writing from beyond established confines. Subscribe today, and join the conversation.
Masthead
Editor
Brigid Hughes
Founding Benefactor
Deborah Pease (1943-2014)
Managing Editor
Megan Cummins
Poetry Editor
Brett Fletcher Lauer
Associate Editors
Sarah Blakley-Cartwright
Sidik Fofana
Taylor Michael
Laura Preston
Contributing Editors
Yiyun Li, Annie Coggan, Martha Cooley, Edwin Frank, Mark Hage, John Haskell, Fiona Maazel, Ayana Mathis, Robert Sullivan, Antoine Wilson
International Contributing Editors
A. N. Devers (England)
Dorthe Nors (Denmark)
Natasha Randall (England)
Motoyuki Shibata (Japan)
Editor At Large
Elizabeth Gaffney
Copy Editors
Anne McPeak
Noreen McAuliffe
Editorial Fellow
Ruby Wang
Readers
Joshua Craig
Madeline Crawford
Julia Ring
Alex Yeranossian
Intern
Claire Margot Dauge-Roth
History
2020
Tolstoy Together, a virtual book club to read War and Peace with Yiyun Li, launches on March 18, 2020. The experience—an 85-day collective journey through an epic novel with thousands of readers across six continents—would later be compiled in the book Tolstoy Together: 85 Days of War and Peace with Yiyun Li. APS Together, a new series of virtual book clubs, launches in June 2020.
2018
A Public Space Books is established.
A Public Space is awarded the inaugural Literary Magazine Prize from the Whiting Foundation for “stand[ing] as a paradigm of what literary magazines can be.”
Editor Brigid Hughes and A Public Space receive the Colophon Award for Paradigm Independent Publishing from CLMP (Community of Literary Magazines and Presses).
The Deborah Pease Prize is established to honor the legacy of A Public Space’s founding benefactor.
Jamel Brinkley’s debut story collection, A Lucky Man (A Public Space/Graywolf), is a finalist for the National Book Award.
2012
Graywolf Press announces a partnership with A Public Space to publish books by contributors to the magazine. The titles published through the partnership would include: Karate Chop, So Much for That Winter, and Mirror, Shoulder, Signal by Dorthe Nors; Cities I’ve Never Lived In by Sara Majka; The Complete Ballet by John Haskell; and A Lucky Man by Jamel Brinkley.
2011
Editor Brigid Hughes receives the PEN/Nora Magid Award for Editing.
Monkey Business, an annual anthology edited by Motoyuki Shibata showcasing contemporary Japanese literature, which developed from a portfolio in the debut issue of A Public Space, debuts. A Public Space would serve as the co-publisher for seven editions of Monkey Business. In 2020, the publication would relaunch as Monkey: New Writing from Japan.