Five reasons to really like Ampersand Magazine

1. Honest and unpretentious writing. 

Editor Alice Gage has themed this latest edition of Ampersand after the title of a series of Photographs taken by Ingeborg Tyssen; From The Heart Of The Forest To The Edge Of The Road. The main articles, written intelligently and personably, are interspersed with poetry, short stories and photo-essays, all centred around notions of remoteness.  Ampersand’s articles, by the large, have the benefit of being long enough to be engaging and educative, whilst still remaining short enough to cater for the fleeting attention spans of non-committal novel-aphobes. Moreover, the magazine is void of the superficial high-gloss writing tone (and coincidently, paper finish) that dominates so much of newsagency shelf-space these days. The writers talk like real people. And Gage put a text message her mum sent her about dinner in the ‘letters to the editor’ page. Now that’s just cute.

2. Very few ads.

And they are conveniently and discreetly located in the back pages. As a child of the age of adz (thankyou Sufjan!), I can see the pros of pages and pages of visually confectionary-esque fashion ads. I too have made my fair share of edgy paper collages for school assignments. But I can’t help but find it economically ambiguous to hand over ten dollars for any publication that dedicates over a quarter of its paper mass to trying to sell you things that you will never be able to afford.

“Out of Ampersand’s 186 odd pages, only 6 are hosting ads, and only one is trying to sell me shoes. And they are Camper shoes. Ampersand has your posture in its interests.”

3. Alice Gage herself.

The birth mother of Ampersand. In a less literal, less placental way. In 2010 she won the UK Council’s Realise Your Dream scholarship, to travel to the UK and hone her publishing skills under the influence of Britain’s wizened magazine authorities. Girl has it figured out. 

4. Nifty post-card booklet size.

So you can look as though you are a pro snail-mail correspondent whilst actually revelling in the dead-pan comics of contributor Leigh Rigozzi, or Benjamin Harrison’s Obituary for the era of manual toll booth operators. Unnecessary deviancy, perhaps. It is all too likely that nobody would care if you were a post-card aficionado or not. But then again, it is these character embellishments that distinguish the enigmas from the plebeians. Also, it’s a handy size to fit in your shoulder bag, so no unsightly folding creases! Tick!

5. Cool art.

This edition of Ampersand features series of artworks by Australian artists Anna Kristensen, Tracey Moffatt and Prudence Murphy. I like all of these artists. Makes for some mean visual stimulus when your eyes start objecting to the onslaught of clever words Gage has graciously thrown at all of us. You should look up these artists. I would put a hyper-link to their websites here, I am just that enthusiastic, but my word limit won’t allow it. Sorry.