Here is a great opportunity to contribute to a great magazine, Esopus. Esopus is a twice-yearly arts magazine featuring fresh, unmediated perspectives on contemporary culture from a wide range of creative professionals. It includes artists’ projects, critical writing, fiction, poetry, visual essays, interviews, and, in each issue, a themed CD of new music. Here is a recent email we received about the magazine that deserves your attention….

Dear Reader:

As you may already know, Esopus exists only because we have been able to rely on the generous support of organizations and individuals to fill the gap between our earned income and operating expenses. That means we need your help in order to preserve all of the things that make every issue of Esopus unique—the refusal to include any advertising or commercially driven content, the high-quality printing, the hand-assembled artists’ multiples, the CD of brand-new music—and to continue to offer the magazine at a heavily subsidized cover price (substantially less than it costs to produce).

I’d be grateful if you’d consider making a donation to the Esopus Foundation this year. For the first time ever, we’re offering “thank-you” gifts for every contribution of $100 and above. These include a limited-edition book corresponding to the printing of Esopus 2 and three superb artists’ multiples. And, for one time only, we are reaching into our archive to offer copies of every one of our first six sold-out issues. As always, your contribution is fully tax-deductible. And regardless of the amount you are able to give, it will entitle you to attend special events held exclusively for donors, like the private reception and viewing of the James Lee Byars exhibition we organized at the Museum of Modern Art earlier this fall.

To make a contribution, you can either visit our website’s “Donate” page.

Esopus is one of the last refuges for a truly commercial-free experience, from the front cover to its very last page. Just reflect for a moment on what that means in our hyper-mediated world: Where else—be it on your Internet homepage, in the pages of your favorite newspaper or magazine, or at your local movie theater—are you able to access content that hasn’t been mitigated by some form of advertising?

Please think about supporting our mission—we quite literally can’t keep Esopus afloat without you.

Thanks for your consideration—and happy holidays!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 11th, 2007 at 11:24 am and is filed under Announcements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.