The staffs of three small literary magazines - Lapham's Quarterly, Slice, and The Coffin Factory - attended the Lit Mag Office Party at the Housing Works bookstore in Soho. The party was created for literary magazines without proper office spaces to network and celebrate the holidays. Proceeds from the party benefited the homeless and those with AIDS. Editors and guests socialized quietly, exchanging gifts and discussing their magazines, which largely rely on volunteers due to their small sizes and budgets.

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You can't party inside a laptop: mini lit-
mags convene to network and celebrate
the season
BY APARNA NARAYANAN
11:00 am Dec. 16, 2011
The staffs of literary journals
Lapham’s Quarterly, Slice, and The
Coffin Factory—and their faithful
supporters—filed into the Housing
Works bookstore in Soho last night
for the Lit Mag Office Party, a Cooper Union's identity crisis:
What would it mean for the
holiday party created for literary famously free school to charge
tuition?
magazines so small they don’t have
By Nancy Scola and Dan Rosenblum (1)
an office, or with too few staffers to
Bloomberg criticizes the state's
populate much of a party on their willingness to undermine M.T.A.
financing
own. The high-ceilinged bookstore
By Dana Rubinstein
was filled, as always, with rolling Party time at Housing Works. Aparna Narayanan
Posthumous Hitchens: As readers
carts and A-frames laden with remember the writer by combing
Recommend Tweet 0 his back-catalog, publishers
bargain books; but the strings of
prepare to offer previously
white lights stretching across the unpublished works
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balcony loft’s wooden posts, a subtle
Where are the little guys to go
holiday gesture, had rendered the Will Hermes on how he Printing in pixels: The with the Knicks' Big Three?
uncovered a history of 'Times' lead designer and
place festive. musical foment in a others on the next- By Howard Megdal
crumbling New York generation web
Amanda Bullock, the events director
Violinist Hilary Hahn and Creative slump or no, Tim
of Housing Works, rallied the composer Jennifer Higdon Burton's 'Charlie and the
on their big new recording Chocolate Factory' is semi-
attention of the milling guests to great
christen the party and announce that follow us @capitalnewyork
its proceeds would benefit the Drudge_Report: Christopher
Hitchens Is Dead...
homeless and those with AIDS. Close by her, a couple of tables held recent issues of the three magazines http://t.co/OdnVW8vN Hitchens
along with other literary swag, items for a white elephant gift exchange, and cheap beer. daveweigel: RT @Slate: Newt Gingrich
David Corn: What I learned
from sharing a tiny office Janet Robinson
“Every magazine you buy goes to a good cause,” Bullock said, “and every beer you drink is a good deed. with Christopher Hitchens:
http://t.co/DsG838ZJ #hitchreads hospitals
So you should feel free to do as many good deeds as you like.” #mustreads
#iowadebate
Slate: David Corn: What I
Guests hollered in approval. If they were disappointed that the party felt sedate—the promised karaoke learned from sharing a tiny taxi
office with Christopher
Madoff
failed to materialize, and the music was streamed in via Pandora (there was no dancing)—journal editors Hitchens: http://t.co/Gi2lRsba
#hitchreads #mustreads
Gillibrand
and guests didn't show it, chatting and drinking amiably and rather quietly. After Bullock, there was no
DailyIntel: Our national BuzzFeed
further public address—nothing showy, just a get-together. Mostly young and smartly dressed, the crowd affairs editor @jheil looks
back on his 21-year Plan B
formed a few clusters, drained Six Points, and ribbed one another over the goofy gifts that were friendship with Christopher Hitchens
http://t.co/mPkp59Pt NYPD
exchanged, traded, and re-traded—a bottle of ketchup, little wooden "stand-up" toys, a VHS copy of
marksorkin: Hitchens and I #ows
Planet of the Apes. Shared an Office
http://t.co/Xo2tmK3K via Christine Quinn
@motherjones
Celia Johnson, the publisher of Slice, explained between greeting guests that she had come up with the Shake Shack
TheAtlantic: "In a world of
singles and doubles hitters, Cuomo
idea for the event because of the limits of her own magazine’s “office.” Launched in 2007, the nonprofit he swung for the fences."
James Warren on Hitchens @MikeBloomberg
magazine publishes twice a year and is almost entirely staffed by volunteers. http://t.co/nlQqyouM #HitchReads
schools
LATimesbooks: Christopher
“Basically, [the office] is my apartment in Bensonhurst,” said Johnson, 29. “Some days it’s a café; if I’m Hitchens' first loyalty was to Knicks
the truth
traveling, it’s a plane. It’s really my laptop.” Together with Bullock, she conceived of the Lit Mag Office http://t.co/Mtf2ZJ70 Giants
Party as a way to “develop synergy” among niche and start-up literary magazines that exist physically Jets

2. only in laptops or similarly cramped spaces and who seek to “converse and enjoy one another’s Mets
company.” #longreads
trains
That was what drew Randy Rosenthal, editor of The Coffin Factory, a new player on the scene whose #ff
premiere issue (print run: 7,000) was on sale at the event. The idea of launching a literary magazine
during a recession does not daunt him.
“The state of the economy fits in with the state of reading; it’s down,” he wrote in an email. “But we
want to put out a magazine anyway, even though it might be illogical, because we know that there still
are—and will be—many people who love reading books, and love literature in print, as we do.”
Partygoer Christina Kraemer, a social worker from Chicago, fit that bill.
“I subscribe to Esopus—I don’t know what it means, I forget—Bomb, Cabinet, the McSweeney’s
magazine,” said Kraemer, a self-described book fanatic. Then she paused, giving her limonata a shake as
she struggled to recall a name. “Paris Review! See? Too many, really. I can’t even remember them,” she
continued, adding: “I like to support independent periodicals, and this is a good way to do it. Here I get
to be at this party without being an office worker. I would hate to be an office worker.”
RELATED TAGS: CULTURE HOLIDAY HOUSING WORKS JOURNAL LAPHAMʼS QUARTERLY LITERARY MAGAZINE
SLICE THE COFFIN FACTORY
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