APIARY 4 Launches June 1

mark your calendar:

On June 1, APIARY Magazine launches its 4^th collection of Philadelphia writing with a late-night literary carnival. Not only is this APIARY’s biggest issue yet — featuring work by 45 local poets and prose writers — but it defies national industry trends, having slowly but confidently grown its circulation from a tiny initial print run of 300 copies in 2010 to 7,000 copies this summer. Those copies will be available free of charge to Philly readers in coffee shops, community centers, bars, libraries, and even a few laundromats.

Recently highlighted in the Philadelphia Inquirer, APIARY has emerged as the go-to publication for anyone curious about local literature, offering readers a biannual cross-section of Philly’s creative communities. APIARY 4 features college professors and high school prodigies, cubicle dwellers and student activists, performance poets and nationally established authors, an anthropologist, a rabbi, a Vietnam vet, and a Pew Fellow within its 80 pages.

This kaleidoscopic mix is no accident. In 2009, APIARY’s founding members created the organization expressly to reflect the diversity and excellence of writing in Philadelphia. The magazine’s all-volunteer staff spends months before every submissions deadline scouring the city for talented new voices. They listen in on open mics and reading series, visit college classrooms, and offer youth workshops in order to ensure that APIARY continues to be, in the words of American Book Award-winning poet Lamont Steptoe, “the journal to watch for future scholars and critics in their efforts to understand the twenty-first century in literary Philadelphia.”