About a month and a half before sending this issue to press, Nell came over to my house to talk about a publishing project, and we ended up talking about the closure of Lavender instead. She shook her head and said that we can’t let this community not have a publication. I said, “Yes, but we have to get Barry on board.” Then we both went back to our lives, letting the topic marinate. The next day, Barry called out of the blue. And here we are.
Every step of this has felt right in a way that’s a little spooky. It feels very natural. I love being back in media. I love working for this community again. And I love getting my hands into every part of it, sleeves rolled up, a little dirty, mostly sweaty.
We’re running at this. This first beautiful issue is for October, and inside it we’re talking to people about the midterms, because a community magazine that ignores an election year isn’t doing its job. We’ll have a monthly cadence from here. I’m overseeing production and design along with editorial, because we have to stay lean to get this off the ground, though we’d welcome freelancers, so think about who in your life wants in.
We are taking it on as our mission to find representative voices and identities for these pages, both on paper and in pixels. For this first one, not even knowing yet how many pages we’d have, I went out and enlisted incredible storytellers and reporters, hoping we’d have enough advertisers to give us enough pages for their writing. Both advertisers and writers delivered. These print issues are meant to be the coffee table keepers, the ones you pick up and put down as you read, not the ones you flip through once and recycle. Then, when you want more, head to the website, which Barry has taken to calling our “virtual community center.” Nell is a tremendous steward for it, and it’s arriving in stages through the fall: articles, guides, a directory, merch, videos, events, giveaways. This is happening. I could not be more excited or proud.
We are learning to do this with a very small crew, in real time, in public. The response to the announcement brought us more good pitches than I have hours in a day for. If there were more hours and minutes, I would have gotten back to every single one of you by now. There aren’t, so I haven’t, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. But I am reading every submission, and I am still reaching out as I go, one inbox at a time.
I am so grateful for this opportunity. For these co-founders: Barry, Brad, Nell, and now the one who rounds out our leadership, my own partner, Dan. We are an incredibly capable, intentional group of people who plan to build a platform that amplifies and employs, not just covers. We value people and their experiences and their stories, because we are part of this community ourselves, through our friends, through the people we love, through our own lives. We strive for the safety and support of everyone here. Not just part of the rainbow. All of it.
Thank you to our advertisers, who backed us before we’d proven a single thing. Thank you to the media who came before us, who support us now, and who we will keep counting as colleagues, not competition. And thank you, reader, for being here at the start of something we are building ourselves, from scratch. New but not. We’re doing it our way.
This is Q Minnesota. Welcome to issue one.
— Andy
