Soft Punk is a literary arts and culture quarterly, based between London and New York. We are intentionally agnostic of a “house style” and liberated from dogmatic conceptions of brow. Our reporting is fair, our fiction vulnerable, and our criticism unwavering. We curate emotive, insightful, and occasionally brazen visual features, with generous space reserved for poetry and art of all mediums.
In the vacuum left by an ever-shrinking landscape of inquisitive outlets, we felt something needed to budge. So here we are pushing.
is a writer and editor born in New York, raised in Dublin, Ireland, and currently living in London. After working in the film industry, he decided to start Soft Punk with Charlie in the summer of 2019. Since then, Jacob has worked as a writer, editor, publisher, and curator for numerous publications and organizations spanning the United States and Europe.
is a writer and editor from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He co-founded Soft Punk with Jacob in the summer of 2019. He is currently writing a graduate dissertation on the poetry of Paul Muldoon.
is an artist from Carlisle, Pennsylvania, now living in Philadelphia, where she works as a graphic designer and illustrator. She uses drawing, photography, and printmaking to examine, pull apart, and translate images. Sofie has art directed several magazines, previously collaborating with Jacob on We Ask No Other Emblem — a 'zine on tattoos and their people. Her work deals with little things that are actually big things, and things that everyone feels.
is a writer, editor, meanderer, and an occasional goofball. He was the Media Director of Do-It-Ourselves, an artist collective in Santa Cruz, before writing for Mixmag in New York. Ryan graduated from NYU's cultural criticism program, enjoyed a stint in Brooklyn, and now lives along the central coast of California.
is a curator from the UK, currently living south of London. She freelances in the art world, working as an artist liaison, digital marketing strategist, and event organizer. Mollie specializes in exhibitions, commissions, and events to support artists in their practice. With a focus on, and passion for, championing women artists, Mollie founded She Curates, a platform that celebrates and showcases female creatives.
is an artist and climate justice activist leading a collective farm and art center on the central coast of California.
is a 30-something downwardly mobile white man who is shy but will, with the right drugs, speak at greater length than is of interest about African politics, psychedelics, journalism and accelerated eco leisure communism, all subjects on which he also likes to write. He has had exactly 25 jobs and would like to die before that number reaches 27. Sam publishes short, unedited, and uncensored essays on his Substack page, Downwardly Nubile.
is an anti-hysterical writer based in New York City. He covers politics, culture, and ontology; he moonlights as a sexual raconteur. Shaan's also written for Bookforum, Reason, and The Progressive. He recently graduated from NYU’s Cultural Reporting and Criticism program.
is a Canadian-Australian writer living in London. She has been published in Meanjin, Westerly and Cordite Review.
is a high school student from New Jersey. She's written about female empowerment, immigration, and intersectional justice for Urban Asian. In her spare time, Medha is an avid plant collector and loves vintage shopping.
Prying Sense from Our Strange Present ~ Soft Punk interrogates our tumultuous contemporary moment, however our contributors choose to interpret it. We publish work that is authentic in tone, boundary-pushing in form, and original in questions or conclusions.
Consistency ~ Soft Punk is a quarterly, publishing four times a year. We believe this is the best model for our content—frequent enough to reflect the constant change we exist in, delayed enough to produce novel and insightful features.
Radical Inclusion ~ There are few limits to the work that Soft Punk is willing to consider. While we may not agree with everything that we publish, we do agree with its right to be said. We aim to foster the free expression of ideas and welcome a broad range of ideologies to our pages. Understanding emerges from earnest dialogue.
Beat ~ Soft Punk does not have a specific avenue of interest. Considering our increasingly multidisciplinary world, we refuse to limit ourselves to false delineations of genre, medium, or subject.
Curation ~ When possible, we will seek to provide consistent and meaningful sources of income to artists we work with. Whether this takes the form of an exhibit, a screening, or a collaboration, we remain aware that our publication is but a singular means of exposure amongst the multiple needed to create sustainable artistic practices.
Community ~ Soft Punk contributors are much like ourselves: those occupying the liminal space between formal education and established careers. Understanding this position to be a precarious one, we strive to champion those fresh voices too often overlooked by the media machine.
Representation ~ Soft Punk is dedicated to identity and gender equity amongst our contributors. We stand proudly as an ally to women, the LGBTQIA+ community, BIPOC individuals, as well as those disenfranchised anywhere in the world. We believe in cultivating the world we hope to exist in, and diversity is a core tenet of that world.
Giving Back ~ The Soft Punk Mutual Aid Program is committed to supporting the tireless work of nonprofits and NGOs in New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, London, and Berlin. Each quarter, we donate a percentage of our revenue to grassroots, communal initiatives in our communities. Additionally, we will maintain communal resources to both provide our patrons with information on businesses worth supporting and communal services available on a bartered basis.
Stewardship ~ At every opportunity, Soft Punk prints our work in the most environmentally sustainable way within our means. A good magazine means very little with no planet to read it on.
Aesthetics ~ Soft Punk is resolved to making each print issue a beautiful object unto itself. While no book should be judged by its cover, we strongly believe that part of showing respect to our contributors is to put their work in a product that reflects the value of their effort, as well as the sincerity with which we take our mission. As such, we hope you keep our issues on your shelves for years to come.
Athenaeum | - | Amsterdam |
Atomic Books | - | Baltimore |
News and Coffee | - | Barcelona |
Magalleria | - | Bath |
Pegasus Books | - | Berkeley |
Books People Places | - | Berlin |
Rosa Wolf | - | Berlin |
Do You Read Me?! | - | Berlin |
Voo Store | - | Berlin |
Post Nothing Magazines | - | Bogota |
Arnolfini | - | Bristol |
Spoonbill & Sugartown | - | Brooklyn |
Quimby's | - | Brooklyn |
McNally Jackson | - | Brooklyn |
Head Hi | - | Brooklyn |
Molasses Books | - | Brooklyn |
Human Relations | - | Brooklyn |
Public Records | - | Brooklyn |
Dizpozitiv Books | - | Bucharest |
Funk Magazine | - | Cologne |
Copenhagen Contemporary | - | Copenhagen |
Khioskh | - | Copenhagen |
Storm Fashion | - | Copenhagen |
Irish Museum of Modern Art | - | Dublin |
The Library Project | - | Dublin |
Fruitmarket Gallery | - | Edinburgh |
Frab's Magazines | - | Forli |
Crow Books | - | Fremantle |
New Edition | - | Fremantle |
GUDBERG NERGER | - | Hamburg |
Coffee Table Mags | - | Hamburg (Online) |
Homestead Store | - | Hull |
The Naked Gallery | - | Kyiv |
Colours May Vary | - | Leeds |
Village Bookstore | - | Leeds |
MZIN | - | Leipzig |
The Photographer's Gallery | - | London |
Artwords | - | London |
MagCulture | - | London |
Burley Fisher Books | - | London |
Rococo News | - | London |
Shreeji News | - | London |
Tenderbooks | - | London |
Magma | - | London |
Tate Modern | - | London |
Lobster Theremin | - | London |
Newsstand.co.uk | - | London (Online) |
Unique Magazines | - | London (Online) |
Stack Magazines | - | London (Online) |
Page Against the Machine | - | Long Beach |
Skylight Books | - | Los Angeles |
Current Events | - | Manhattan Beach |
MagNation | - | Melbourne |
Casa Bosques | - | Mexico City |
Reading Room | - | Milan |
Le Big Mag | - | Moscow (Online) |
McNally Jackson | - | New York |
Casa Magazines | - | New York |
Iconic Magazines | - | New York |
Import News | - | New York |
Ink on A | - | New York |
Wolfman Books | - | Oakland |
ISSUES | - | Oakland |
Bye Bye Neighbor | - | Online |
Mac's Smoke Shop | - | Palo Alto |
Librairie Sans Titre | - | Paris |
Edicola 518 | - | Perugia |
Avril 50 | - | Philadelphia |
Indent Magazines | - | Portland |
Mr. Page | - | Riga |
Basheer Graphic Books | - | Singapore |
PAPERCUT | - | Stockholm |
Rare Mags | - | Stockport |
Multi-Arts Corporation | - | Taipei |
Löwenherz Buchhandlung | - | Vienna |
Additional distribution available through Antenne Books.