As we get ready to launch our latest magazine, Loam Co-Editor Kate reflects on the process.

Kailea and I have been in a big push the past month and a half to both wrap up this year’s magazine and finalize the cover for our forthcoming book on building disaster-resilient communities. It’s been a meaningful, difficult, and humbling experience—as well as one that has been a reminder of just how radical the pace of print is within our current social media-saturated culture. We haven’t been documenting our work; instead we’ve been immersed in the act of making. But now we are in a place where our first magazine in 2 years (!) is available for pre-order, and I’m feeling ready to share more on the process with you all.

When I think of this year’s magazine, “contemplative” comes to mind. As many of you know, Loam has been in a process of discernment. At its best, print publishing is a simultaneous act of refusal (see: hot takes, endless “content”, grind culture) and of joyful invitation (see: deep reflections, long-form reading, relational education).

Usually, we design and organize around a theme, but this year, we decided to try something different. Inspired by our constellation of creatives, we invited a few collaborators who we’ve been in long-standing relationship with to share what felt most alive in their hearts. The resulting collection is maybe our most intimate yet. From reflections on pivoting careers to an essay on evacuation to our first work of fiction, these contributions pulse with life. This is a magazine about making things with our hands, about casting spells of protection, about accompanying climate collapse, about walking in the shade.

Putting together this magazine felt a little bit like patchworking a quilt. It was a meditative process that sometimes required us to retrace our steps. With every contribution, we asked ourselves how does this offering nourish the whole? Our hope was to edit a magazine that would invite you to slow down—to read (and reread), to take notes, to ask questions. This was particularly important to us as the publishing branch of the Weaving Earth Center for Relational Education (WE). One of Weaving Earth’s goals is to inspire earth intimacy and enchantment. We wanted every essay to create the space to be in that practice.

In years past, we hustled hard to do the ‘most.’ We published 9 books in a year, fit as much as we could into a single magazine, packed our calendar with virtual workshops and in-person events and weekly essays. But as Loam evolves with us, we are interested in ‘enough’—in a sense of abundance that isn’t marked by the maximum. This magazine will feel very different than our earlier iterations. It’s smaller in scale, closer to a literary journal than a colorful collage. My hope is that these subtle shifts can be a source of delight; a reminder that as we change, our work can change with us. We are not tied to our first draft. We have permission to revise.

So as we celebrate ten years of Loam, I want to continue to reimagine what print publishing can be to our community. From curating anthologies on living through liminality to editing booklets on community gardening, our print work has long sought to braid together the personal, political, and practical. We hope what we publish can enliven and enrich. We also hope it can be a space of rest and regeneration.

May this magazine meet you in this moment.

With love,

Kate

PRE ORDER