Emdashes = editor Emily Gordon
and various esteemed contributors

RSS feed: Here it is!

Emdashes, founded December 2004, is a place where keen and dedicated readers of The New Yorker, past and present, can find related news and commentary: about people, subjects, and ideas within the magazine, and events and conversations outside its pages.

Emily Gordon, editor, is the managing editor of PRINT magazine and a longtime admirer of The New Yorker. She’s been on staff at The Nation, Newsday, PEN America, Legal Affairs, and Grand Street. She has a B.A. in English from Barnard College and an M.F.A. in poetry from New York University; this fall, she joins the faculty of D-Crit, the new M.F.A. program in design criticism at the School of Visual Arts. She’s written reviews, features, and op-eds for The New York Times Book Review, Newsday, Salon, The Nation, PRINT, The Village Voice, and The Washington Post Book World, among others. (There’s a small sampling of her clips here and in the green footer below.)

She’s been interviewed about Emdashes for Yahoo!, a Normblog profile, La Presse, the Daily News, and the Toronto Globe & Mail. (Emdashes has also won some kind seals of approval.) She has a Flickr page, a freewheeling list of affinities, and a (partial) philosophy. You can reach her at emily[at]emdashes.com, or, for questions relating to PRINT magazine or graphic design, at firstname.lastname@printmag.com.

Martin Schneider, deputy editor, writes the column The Squib Report, an in-depth look into the 82 years of The Complete New Yorker’s digital archive and other subjects. Martin also compiles the Emdashes Google Calendar and reports from New Yorker-related events in New York City and beyond. In his paying work life, he edits books for university presses, teaches, and writes book reviews from either his home in Westchester County, New York, or the Austrian countryside. You can reach him at martin[at]emdashes.com.

Benjamin Chambers, columnist, writes The Katharine Wheel, a column about New Yorker-related fiction, which is named in honor of Katharine White, The New Yorker’s first fiction editor. Chambers is the editor of The King’s English, a prizewinning online magazine that specializes in novella-length fiction. He received his MFA from Washington University in St. Louis and has had his fiction, poetry, and essays published in numerous journals, including The Iowa Review, ZYZZYVA, MANOA, and the Mississippi Review.

Brian Sholis, art editor, is the Artforum.com Editor at Artforum. He has written for Artforum, Parkett, Afterall, Flash Art, Bookforum, Print, the Detroit Metro-Times, and the New York Press, among other periodicals, and has contributed to books published by Taschen and Phaidon. He is the coeditor, with Noah Horowitz, of The Uncertain States of America Reader (Serpentine Gallery/Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art/Sternberg Press, 2006). His personal site is www.briansholis.com; he lives in Brooklyn.

John Bucher, contributing writer, lives in Vancouver and is the creator of the blog New Yorker Comment. For Emdashes, he interviews Cartoon Caption Contest winners in the popular recurring feature “O Caption! My Caption!” While working at CBC Radio, John wrote the blog Feeling the Heat. You can reach him, particularly with media job offers in the Vancouver area, at john[at]emdashes.com.

Quin Browne, contributing writer, was born in New Orleans. She writes a blog at FMD, and some of her stories can be found under her name at Six Sentences. She’s self-taught in everything from theater management to family law to script supervision to being a mother. So far, the theater company is doing well, the films work, and the children are neither on America’s Most Wanted nor working the pole. Her preoccupations include eavesdropping, asking questions, watching far too many films and plays, reading on a regular basis, giving you her opinion whether you like it or not, and listening to yours.

Emdashes also publishes contributions by various esteemed guests, including The New Yorker’s librarians, Jon Michaud and Erin Overbey, who write the bimonthly Ask the Librarians column.

The site was designed and built by Patric King and Su at House of Pretty; most illustrations are by Jesse Ewing at Inkleaf, with others by Carolita Johnson (who writes and draws newyorkette) and Lara Tomlin (represented at iSpot). The pencil-girl logo, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad, was originally created by Jennifer Hadley.

A guide to the categories listed in the top green header:

Pick of the Issue: What to read? Every week, we choose the choicest cuts from the previous week’s magazine.

Headline Shooter: A rat-a-tat list of breaking stories about the magazine and its staff and contributors. Headline Shooter is also the name of a 1933 movie in which Robert Benchley played a radio announcer.

Hit Parade collects the posts that got people all whirled up like soft-serve ice cream.

New Yorker Festival: Here’s where you’ll find news and announcements about the upcoming 2007 festival and, come October, our reviews of events. My coverage of the 2005 and 2006 festivals is also here.

Seal Barks envelops all the posts about art in the magazine—cartoons, covers, spots, photos, and illustrations. The name comes from the classic 1932 cartoon by James Thurber, in which a fed-up woman says to the man next to her in bed, “All right, have it your way—you heard a seal bark!” In a related category, “O Caption! My Caption!”, we interview the winners of the weekly Cartoon Caption Contest, who must battle nearly 7,000 other entrants to make the grade and claim their prize. It’s an elite and fascinating band.

Ask the Librarians: In their column, The New Yorker’s head librarians, Jon Michaud and Erin Overbey, turn their sharp insight and deep research to your questions about the magazine past and present, as well as its personalities famous and forgotten. Have a question for Erin and Jon? Here’s how to submit.

On the Spot: News and reviews of New Yorker-related events, like readings, talks, plays, musical performances, gallery openings, and so on. “On the Spot” is also for announcing events we can’t go to, because they’re in Alaska or something. Emily prefers not to take notes at parties, so you’ll have to rely on others for scuttlebutt.

Looked Into is for reviews of things related to The New Yorker, by us and others. It’s for focused critical examinations of things (like books and blog posts, but not events) that aren’t actually in the magazine, but are in its spacious orbit.

Eustace Google: We google phrases, names, and other mysteries so you don’t have to. It’s a veritable Katz’s Deli of links in further pursuit of the details in a New Yorker story, drawing, ad, or news item.

Eds.: Items about the editors-in-chief since the start of the magazine: Harold Ross, William Shawn, Robert Gottlieb, Tina Brown, and David Remnick.

The Catbird Seat: Friends & Guests is where people we like write about whatever they want.

Jonathans Are Illuminated This category concerns all Jonathans of letters, the ones you know well and the ones who have yet to leap into Bright Young Jonathanness.

X-Rea tracks sightings of and inquiries into the work of The New Yorker’s first art director, Rea Irvin, who created not only the iconic ironic dandy Eustace Tilley but the magazine’s signature typeface. As you can guess from the category’s title, his name is pronounced Ray as in Sugar, not Ree as in readerly.

Letters & Challenges: Letters from readers. Never fear—we print only the letters you’ve explicitly given us permission to print, whether with your name or anonymously; just let us know. Here’s how to send one. There are also occasional challenges and contests. And prizes.

Personal: At last, something really bloggy! Read Emily’s Innermost Thoughts, or at least the ones she chooses to share with the wide world web.

Emdashes Calendar: Our customized Google Calendar lists events around the country that we think Emdashes readers would like to know about, including but not limited to New Yorker-related events like the New Yorker Festival, the New Yorker Conference, readings by contributors, and events off the beaten track. If you have an event to suggest, email it to us. To add the Emdashes calendar to your iCal, feed reader, &c., click here. The calendar is currently semi-dormant while its editor is abroad, but please feel to continue to send in relevant events in the meantime.

Other em dash aficionados:
Typography from letterpress to web: em-dash
This Daily Kos contributor
Em Dash, of San Francisco

Further Emily Gordon note by Emily Gordon: Incidentally, Emily Fox Gordon, who wrote the highly regarded nonfiction books Mockingbird Years and Are You Happy?, is not me. Nor is Julia Emily Gordon, who painted in the 19th century, or Emily Gordon the aikido practitioner, who can definitely beat me up, though I’m sure that’s not her style. There’s a painter, a real estate practitioner, several students, and a British financial reporter, and they are not me, but if they would like to form an organization, I am all for it.