An important message from This Land Press

by Vincent LoVoi

03/02/2017

Dear readers,

At This Land Press, we’ve decided to take a timeout from our magazine as the wild world of media finds its way. The rest of This Land Press continues to move forward.

Our ambitions for the magazine are as strong as ever, but we want to let the current environment settle before a small innovator like us experiments again. There’s a lot of angry noise, and journalists and other writers and media thinkers and the reading public now face some existential questions about truth, facts, science, integrity, and security.

The stories from the middle of America remain important, now and into the future, and we plan to continue to find them and tell them. But it’s a good time to temporarily pause our print cycle.

And on the personal level, several of us here at This Land Press have ongoing side projects—a book, a film, a cause, a bike shop—that need our energies for the time being. It’s all good stuff and reflects the nature of This Land Press: It’s OK to explore and try new ideas and step back and reflect and pause and renew. That’s what we’re doing with This Land magazine.

But the many other parts of This Land Press will stay the course. We’ll continue to post great writing from past issues and other selected pieces on the web at ThisLandPress.com. We’ll also launch our new documentary from This Land Films in 2017—Far Western—which recently premiered in Europe at the Amsterdam Documentary Film Festival and will soon premiere in the U.S.

And our retail store will continue to offer This Land design sensibilities with the same focus and honesty as our writers and filmmakers and artists. The online store—and brick-and-mortar stores and partner stores throughout Oklahoma—will make available our many books, back issues, apparel, films, digital content, music, housewares, art, and other new and special products that showcase life and culture in the middle of America. This Land is a brand that’s unapologetically from the middle of America, telling stories that matter.

New projects are always possible, too. We remain open to new ideas from writers, artists, filmmakers, and others who need a strong home for bold new projects.

This Land Press is also partnering with the best literary magazine in the nation, Oxford American, the winner of the National Magazine Award for General Excellence last year. Together, we’ll provide an issue of Oxford American to all of our subscribers as a thank-you gift and to tide them over until This Land is back. We also invite you to visit oxfordamerican.org/subscribe and use promo code OALAND to get a one-year subscription to Oxford American for only $19.98.

But before we temporarily shut down the printing presses, we have something more to say:

Given the importance of race in American society today, we’ve published The Race Reader, a double issue compiling our best writings over the past seven years about the subject. It includes the stories from throughout the middle of America, featuring the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot, the ongoing conflict between the Cherokee Freedmen and the Cherokee Nation, the inspiration for Fight Club, the tribe of the Wannabes, and many other articles that shed light on race relations.

We will also publish a double issue on the role of religion in politics, community, and history. That too is so relevant to today’s head-scratching political landscape.

Our pending projects are as important as the values that all of us share. The future is important too, as we return to publishing the stories of a place. So, stay tuned and don’t forget about us. We’ll return in a fashion that might surprise you and possibly even amaze you.

With gratitude,

Vincent LoVoi, Michael Mason, and Stuart Hetherwood