n+1 is a print and digital magazine of literature, culture, and politics published three times a year. We also post new online-only work each week and publish books expanding on the interests of the magazine.
n+1 was founded in 2004, in opposition to an intellectual scene that felt disturbingly fragmented: even as the US launched one horrific war after another, literary magazines didn’t discuss politics, while political magazines didn’t care about literature, and big ideas had to be buried in tiny book reviews. The founding editors of n+1 looked back toward the dormant American tradition of politically engaged literary magazines in order to intervene in the present—and to change it.
More than two decades on, n+1 “has established itself as the bellwether of a new generation of literary intellectuals” (Harper’s). It has published dozens of issues of the print magazine—which appears triannually—as well as thousands of online-only pieces and a large handful of critically acclaimed books from its two imprints. n+1 has also programmed hundreds of readings, panels, and events across New York City and beyond.
In 2023, n+1 was awarded the Whiting Literary Magazine Prize. In their citation, the judges celebrated n+1 as “a distinctive, erudite editorial project overflowing with rigor and generosity” and “both magnet and catapult for intellectually fearless writers,” many of whom have gone on to write for leading publications in the US and beyond. Essays and stories in n+1 have been expanded and adapted into countless bestselling and award-winning books and have been recognized by the Best American Essays, the O. Henry Award, the Pushcart Prize, and the Rona Jaffe Award. n+1’s contributors have won Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, and even a Nobel.
For all the remarkable growth and ongoing transformation, n+1’s editorial mission remains the same: to encourage writers, new and established, to take themselves as seriously as possible, to write with as much energy and daring as possible, and to connect their own deepest concerns with the broader social and political environment—that is, to write, while it happens, a history of the present day.
Praise for n+1
“n+1 has reinvented the little magazine.”
—Toril Moi
“An island of hope in a sea of inanity.”
—Nancy Fraser
“A concentration of work without precedent or equal in the US or anywhere else.”
—Francis Mulhern, New Left Review
“The rightful heir to the Partisan Review and The New York Review of Books. It is rigorous, curious, and provocative.”
—Malcolm Gladwell
“One of the consistently excellent periodicals of the last decade.”
—Pankaj Mishra
“An energetic, innovative magazine of the type that fights against our culture’s encroaching, dopy, middle-minded big media by being committed to the value of being articulate, daring, and (yes) intellectual.”
—George Saunders
“A lively, stimulating magazine of a rare intellectual scope.”
—Joyce Carol Oates
“Just when you think you’re intellectually alone in the world, something like n+1 falls into your hands.”
—Jonathan Franzen
“So many good writers have come tumbling out of that small journal in the past few years that it’s begun to resemble an intellectual clown car.”
—The New York Times
“The best goddamn literary magazine in America.”
—Mary Karr
n+1 and its sister imprint, the contemporary art publisher Paper Monument, are published by the 501(c)(3) nonprofit n+1 Foundation.
Support n+1 with a tax-deductible donation here.