Encounter Magazine

Encounter is more than a publication—it is a community group moonlighting as a publication, created by two friends hoping to inject their local writing ecosystem with a strong sense of community and to give their friends (and themselves) a space for co-creation, growth, and accountability. To do so, Encounter will have three primary functions.

First, Encounter will have regularly scheduled writing groups, each of which will have equal parts writing and discussion. At Encounter, we believe that discussion is a fundamental part of the writing process, and perhaps the part of the process that is most often overlooked. Creating a space to discuss our ideas will serve to inspire all of our writing and encourage vulnerability. It is not until we open ourselves to discomfort as writers that we will see improvement and develop confidence in our craft.

Second, Encounter will do what its founders—Henry and James—first set out to do as a vanity project: publish. Writing is most real when it is shared. Encounter wants to encourage people to share their beautiful thoughts and their artful words with each other, instead of remaining siloed from the world. Despite living after the invention of both the printing press and the internet, it feels more difficult than ever to receive praise for our writing. Substack is great and brings the potential for virality, but it is still a siphoned off type of writing. If anything, it encourages the opinion that writing should happen in an online world without face to face connection, instead of communing as writers across history have done (see: the Inklings; the Bloomsbury Group, the interwar artistic period in Paris). And for those who perhaps feel more vocational about their writing, breaking through the ironclad gates of the publishing world can seem like an insurmountable goal.

In light of these perennial problems, Encounter will create the infrastructure to celebrate each other and do what so many writers—recreational and vocational—hope for themselves: to hold their words. We don’t have a set timeline for publication: instead, we will release issues whenever the collective believes that there are enough pieces their writers are proud of to publish.

Finally, Encounter understands that, contained within the community it hopes to foster, brilliant minds will abound, each with something unique to say. Regular workshops and seminars will feature writers from Encounter who want to share a specific aspect or genre of writing about which they feel particularly confident. In addition to encouraging people to share what they hold most dearly about writing, Encounter hopes that the workshops and seminars will help facilitators strengthen their personal voices and give participants new confidence to experiment in their writing.

It is often said that one must be wary not to let perfection become the enemy of good. We would add that the desire for perfection is far more pernicious: it is often the enemy of creating anything at all. To that end, nothing about Encounter strives for ‘perfection,’ as it is strictly understood. Rather, as the name suggests, Encounter exists for friends and friends-to-be to come together and explore the encounters that fill their lives and provide meaning. These encounters, like the pieces that will come to represent them, might be messy but meaningful, ineffable but inexhaustible.

Furthermore, there is no single type of piece—critical review, fiction, poetry, or personal essay—that lays sole claim to Encounter. Encounter is rather going to become exactly what the people who make it possible—its future writers—make of it. As the old adage goes, many are the sages, but truth is one. At Encounter, we might amend that to say: many are the mediums, but our message is one. And this message is that: a story well-told—whether fictional or factual—is not just an entertaining form of escapism, but our most powerful way of deeply reevaluating how we lead our own lives through understanding the experiences of others. That is, through encountering others and ourselves.