I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how people consume online content and talking about those ever-shifting habits with the public. How do stories get told and disseminated in the age of social sharing—especially if they’re not easily digestible or instantly familiar? How can we make sure that writers are given resources to dive into stories that might not be obvious after a cursory Google search? Thankfully, the fine people at 29th Street Publishing are around and also thinking about those questions, as I learned during a Mets game in July. Perhaps prophetically, it was Fireworks Night, and my mind exploded with possibility as 29th Street CEO David Jacobs told me about his company’s plans for building apps around writers. Since then, we’ve been on a path to create what (after, truth be told, some reticence on my part) is called Maura Magazine, a weekly periodical telling stories about the culture around us—whether they’re about music, food, technology, TV, movies, books, or anything else. I’m leaving its purview deliberately open-ended because I want to see where we—the writers, the readers, and me—can take this deceptively simple concept.

And here we are. Thank you to the 29th Street team: David Jacobs, Natalie Podrazik, Blake Eskin, Tim Moore, Liz Lettieri, Greg Knauss, and Sue Apfelbaum. Thank you to Vijith Assar and Buster Bylander for their tireless work on the web site you see here (which will, as time goes on, have supplemental content in addition to the previews currently available). Thank you to Brad Nelson for copyediting and beta-testing; Jami Attenberg for heading up our soon-to-debut fiction department; Dan Cohen, Dan Rivkin, and Stephen Swift for beta-testing; and to all the writers whose wonderful writing is in the first two issues and will be in forthcoming issues. (Being online for more than 20 years means you get to know a lot of really talented wordsmiths, and I’m lucky that people from all my mini-epochs have pitched in and plan to do so.)

I’m really excited for what’s to come, and I do hope you check out what we have to offer.