American Chordata: A brilliantly designed literary magazine that sidesteps smug melodrama

New York-based literary magazine American Chordata is only in its second issue and already has quite a following. The magazine of new writing is edited by Ben Yarling and art directed by photographer Bobby Doherty, and as well as publishing the brilliant essays, fiction and poetry one should expect from a literary magazine, it has art and photography that really hold their own. Designed by Adly Elewa, issue two features an essay on life as a young manuscript editor; photographs of asbestos removal and dogs; poems on how to be someone else and the terminology of sailing amongst many other visual and textual stories.

On the “difficult second issue” Ben says: “Choices, both visual and editorial, start to look like rules… and with that in mind, I wanted to make sure this issue would be representative of the conceptual and formal variation possible for future editions of the magazine. I also hoped it’d be an object people would want to cherish and keep.” He adds: “We want to be a really good literary and arts magazine that celebrates sophisticated design and earnest expression on the same page… What interests us most is work that’s new but not smug, that’s brave enough to give us emotional detail and skilful enough to do it without melodrama.”

As well as the print edition, American Chordata is available as a free PDF, as part of the team’s want for the magazine to be broadly accessible. Moving forward, the magazine is set to expand on all fronts whilst maintaining the principle of being “clear-sighted without being cynical, cool without being cold”. On the next issue Ben says: “The submissions we’ve got for issue three! Ah! I’m so excited to just keep getting better with each issue. We have a lot of reading to do.”