To Keep The New Critic Alive
Our solution to the publication running out of money
Presently, The New Critic doesn’t have enough funds to make it to the new year. We need paid subscriptions to survive into 2026.
When we founded The New Critic in May 2025, we wanted to create an American publication that spoke seriously and specifically to young people. College-aged writers and readers lacked a dedicated forum for long-form nonfiction with a national scope, a place where young people could read each other’s work and older people could read young writers. The digital infrastructure of our era made a new kind of journal possible, and we knew a hunger for such a publication existed — it certainly did among our friends — a real magazine for the American university writer, unbounded by institutional authorities, print localities, narrow politics, or shallow style.
Since our founding, The New Critic has published over 117,000 words of great prose: 31 essays by 24 authors on herons, shrimp, and toddlers; originality, confessional writing, and the personal essay; cellphones, libraries, and college bars; Charlie Kirk and Jhumpa Lahiri; living well, religious hunger, and the loss of reciprocity; absinthe, vaginismus, and Orthodox Christianity; equality in friendship, high school in Nebraska, and an abbey in Kalamazoo; daydreaming and really daydreaming; the attention counterculture, nostalgia and trauma in politics, and a conservative conference on the American political novel; as well as conversations about friendship despite Israel-Palestine, the mystical humanities, founding start-ups through Y Combinator, the machine learning intern ecosystem, and world record-setting endurance cycling.
Our writers, all aged 18-23, hail from
Capital University, Ohio
Columbia University, New York
Dartmouth College, New Hampshire
Deep Springs College, California
Georgetown University, Washington D.C.
Harvard University, Massachusetts
Stanford University, California
Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania
University of Chicago, Illinois
University of Illinois
University of Liverpool, United Kingdom
University of Michigan
University of Virginia
Yale University, Connecticut
But our work comes with the costs involved in running a publication. We believe in paying our writers and artists, and The New Critic compensates $125 an essay. Our paid subscribers allow us to commission work and realize ever grander and more daring ideas for the publication. They remove the bias of financial pressures through individual donations and keep our project free and accessible to all young people. To help us secure The New Critic into the new year and beyond, we are offering a special annual tier this December in the hope that anyone can pitch in to keep us going.
$7 monthly subscription | If you love The New Critic and want to support our writers and artists
$30 annual subscription | For anyone who cares about The New Critic, annually about as much as a couple paperbacks or movie tickets (only $0.58 a week)
$250 founding subscription | Every founding subscriber buys two essays for the The New Critic
Our goal is 26 new paid subscribers for 2026!
We are immensely grateful to all who read and support The New Critic. All together, paid subscriptions, both small and large, can guarantee the future of our publication. We hope you will subscribe to keep this commons of young writers, artists, and readers alive for many years to come.
– The Editors | Tessa Augsberger, Milla Ben-Ezra, Elan Kluger, and Rufus Knuppel
