The literary journal attracted great names. Its issues sold well. And then it was over — a fate that offers insight into the tenuous place of literary magazines in the American publishing landscape.
By Kate Dwyer
Published Dec. 3, 2022 / Updated Dec. 5, 2022, 1:15 p.m. ET
From the start, Astra Magazine was unusual.
The literary journal, which published its first issue in April, had the backing of Astra Publishing House, the U.S. arm of the Chinese publishing conglomerate Thinkingdom Media Group. It was not intended as a moneymaking operation, but as a prestige vehicle for the publishing house, said Nadja Spiegelman, who was hired in 2021 to be its founding editor in chief.
The financial security afforded Astra great creative freedom and the ability to pursue the loftiest of goals: to promote literature in translation in the English-reading world. It also allowed Spiegelman to hire full-time staff members and to appropriately compensate writers and translators, often a challenge at fledgling literary publications.
The first issue, “Ecstasy,” was presented to great fanfare in the spring with contributions from literary celebrities such as Ottessa Moshfegh, Leslie Jamison, Terrance Hayes and the U.S. poet laureate Ada Limón, plus internationally recognized voices in translation, including Fernanda Melchor, Sayaka Murata, and Forough Farrokhzad. Its 9,000 copies nearly sold out. So did the 8,000 copies of the second issue, “Filth.”
But on Monday, Spiegelman emailed her network of contributors with news of the magazine’s closure, citing “a business decision in a difficult year for publishing.” The third issue, tentatively titled “Broke,” will not go to print, the website will cease publishing and the staff — including deputy editor Samuel Rutter and poetry editor Aria Aber — will be out of work.
Astra Magazine, Spiegelman said, was “both unusual and exciting, a glamorous and subversive literary project, a breath of fresh air and hope.” And then it was over, leaving fewer places in the United States to publish and read new fiction. Its short existence offers insight both into what is possible for a literary magazine to accomplish and into the tenuous place such publications occupy in the American publishing landscape.
Historically, literary magazines have functioned as sites of experimentation and real-time documentation of a moment’s sensibility. . . .
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