Better loves you! Over the past year and a half, we’ve been grateful to receive support from more than two hundred individual donors and Kickstarter backers, raising more than $6,000 to help us cover operating costs. Thanks to you, we’re making Better even better: The first annual Better Prizes in fiction and poetry were a huge success, and the funds from that annual contest will go a long ways toward covering our annual operating budget. We also launched a YouTube channel alongside issue four, where we’ll maintain an archive of every poetry/fiction/nonfiction video we’ve published (almost sixty in the first three issues alone!). In the next three months, we’ll be launching our broadside series and our podcast, too. And did we mention we went quarterly? Because we did. Beginning with issue four, you’re now getting a new dose of Better roughly every February, May, August, and November.
If you backed Better’s Kickstarter campaign back in March 2013, then by now most of you should have received your rewards. Those of you who pledged for the Better Broadside series still have a month or two to wait… thank you for your patience! But if you pledged for something other than the broadside series and you haven’t yet received your reward, please write to us!
If you want to help Better but you missed the 2013 Kickstarter campaign, you can still help us out in any number of ways. As an impoverished startup venture with no intention of generating profit or paying its editors in the foreseeable future, Better welcomes donations of goods, services, or straight-up cash. Since we know it’s often easier to volunteer materials than direct funding, we maintain a wish list of items and services that will help us to keep doing what we do, and more importantly, to do it better. If, like us, you’re feeling a little too poor for charity, you can help us immensely just by entering our contests: we’ll get fifteen bucks out of it, and you might get a thousand.
In January 2014, we launched a YouTube channel featuring every video we’ve ever produced for the magazine. If you’re counting, on our new quarterly schedule, that will be almost a hundred videos each year! We’re trying to create a video archive of the American literary moment. In addition to the YouTube channel (to which we think you should subscribe immediately), we plan to launch a weekly podcast sometime in late summer, early fall 2014. We know it’s not always easy or convenient to sit still and read a thirty-page story on your little laptop screen, which is why we want to give you a regular dose of Better in your ear-holes, and to provide a (slightly) more educated alternative to those late-night viral kitten videos.
Better is growing rapidly—in the past year alone we’ve switched from a semi-annual to a quarterly schedule, launched a YouTube channel and a broadside series, and we’re introducing our weekly podcast early this fall. There’s a lot of work to be done, and we’re on the lookout for new editors and staff! If you’d like to lend a hand in any way, please send a CV and a brief statement of interest and intent to the attention of Sean Bishop, Editor, at better.culture.lit@gmail.com. If we like the cut of your jib, we’ll ask for an interview and additional materials. At the moment, Better is especially on the lookout for a managing editor, for a web developer and social media editor, for audio/video editors and engineers, and for one additional editor each in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. For now (and for the foreseeable future) all positions at Better are unpaid—we’re committed to keeping Better free for everyone, forever, so until we can scare up some substantial grant funding, that means no paychecks for the staff.
Seth Abramson; Samuel Amadon; Cynda Collins Arsenault; Claire Askew; Jia Oak Baker; Hannah Baker-Siroty; Melissa Barrett; Zack Bean & Michelle Miley; Sarah Beil; Oliver Bendorf & Coco O’Connor; Lillian-Yvonne Bertram; Barbara Bishop; Seth Bishop; Sarah Blake; Jaz Blakeston-Petch; Bloof Books; Blue Bicycle Books; Paula Bomer; Jenn Brehm; Willam Brewer; Andrew Brininstool; Jeremy Bronaugh; Amelia Bucek; MaryAnn Bucek-Kenny; Rowan Hisayo Buchanan; E. S. Bumas; Jess Burgess; David Alan Butler; Tina V. Cabrera; Haley Campbell; Canarium Books; Kara Candito; Rachel Cann; Elisabeth Carter; Brittany Cavallaro; Laurie Ann Cedilnik; Michael Cherry; Andrew Cohen; Callie Collins; Lydia Conklin; Judy Coombs; Brandon Courtney; Katie Cortese; Wayne Cresser; Sara Crosby; Jennine Capó Crucet; Jesse Damiani; Stephen Danos; Kavita Das; Justin Lawrence Daugherty; Rachel Day; Sion Dayson; Jaquira Díaz; Michael Dickes; G Dietz; Will Donnelly; Michelle Dove; Ryler Dustin; Laura Eve Engel; Sandy Ewen; Jessica Farquhar; Raina L. Fields; Tamara Fish; Lydia Fitzpatrick; John Henry Fleming; Stephanie Ford; Graham Foust; Kit Frick; Philip Fried; Celeste Gainey; Christina Garofalo; Roxane Gay; Luke Gnadinger; Kevin Gonzalez; Lynn Goode; Kathy Goodkin; Benjamin Goodney; Deborah Gorlin; Lauren Gottlieb-Miller; Marcos B. Gouvea; Barry Grass; Keith W. Hagel; Liz Windhorst Harmer; Eli Hastings; Alison Hathaway; Rebecca Hazelton; Carolyn Roch & Matt Henneman; Chrissy Hennessey; Carolivia Herron; Chloe Honum; Robert Houghton; Missy & Peter Hyland; John James; Terrell James; Jay, Cait, and Finn; Kirby Johnson; Sara Eliza Johnson; Michael Jones; Skip Jones; Janine Joseph; Anna Journey; Cynthia Kane; Maya Kanwal; Jesse Lee Kercheval; John Kilduff; Kristin Kiser; Jen Knox; Loren Kwan; Linda Ledford-Miller; Jill Leininger; Eric & Kristin LeMay; Roxanne Leino; Shara Lessley; Line Assembly; Matthew Lippman; Brandon Lopez; Patrick Lucy; Kerb Lydick; Tony Mancus; Bronwyn Mahoney; Manor House Quarterly; Surena & Misty Matin; Toni Matlock; Matt Mauch; Nina McConigley; Molly McCracken; Shane McCrae; Edward McFadden; Kimberley McGill; Jenna McGuiggan; Leslie Anne Mcilroy; Jill Meyers; Joe Milazzo; Rebecca Miles; Andrew R. Missel; Judith Claire Mitchell; Christopher Mohar; Rachael Morrison; Mark A. Nakamura; Willy Nast; Denise Newman; Brian Nicolet; Matthew Nienow; Judy Nyquist; Dan O’Brien; Paul Otremba; Marian Palaia; John Bradley Peele; Adam Peterson; Emilia Phillips; Jessica Piazza; Jason Polan; Sarah Pollard; Niina Pollari; Justine Post; Lise M. Quintana; Michal Rosenn; Laura L. Runge; Benjamin Rybeck; Anjali Sachdeva; Matt Sailor; Yuko Sakata; Sarabande Books; Michael Schmeltzer; Rob Schlegel; Kate Schmitt; Andrew Scott; Chaiti Sen; Rinku Sen; Shifra Sharlin; Chris Shaw; G David Shaw; Matthew Siegel; Brian Simoneau; Chad Simpson; Jacob Singer; Eric Smith; Nancy Smith; S. E. Smith; Angela So; Mark Nathan Stafford; Jodee Stanley; Elizabeth Ames Staudt; Submittable; Austin Tremblay; Brian Trimboli; Kathryn & Josh Turner; Peter Van Hyning; Vanessa Angelica Villarreal; Coert Voorhees; Susan Vorkoper; Becca Wadlinger; Ron Wallace; Wave Books; Michael West & Mary West; Sasha West & Charlie Clark; Adrienne Westall; Christopher Weston; Valerie Wetlaufer; Jessica Wilbanks; Patrick Williams; Steven Wolfe; Lesley Wolff; Michael Wright; Steven Wright; Maybritt Rose Young; Laurie Saurborn Young
