The vibrant intersection of Silver Lake and Sunset Boulevard is the home of Los Angeles' newest literary treasure. Former LA Weekly editors Laurie Ochoa and Joe Donnelly founded Slake, a literary quarterly. The pair publishes long-form journalism, essays, memoir, fiction and extensive foto spreads.

In an interview with Neon Tommy, the editors talk about the history of Slake, how they are trying to save print journalism and what it takes to put together a new issue of the book -- as they call their magazine.  

I guess we start with the name. Why is it called Slake?

Laurie Ochoa: Slaking your thirst?

Joe Donnelly: We felt that there was a desire for something like this. You know, there was a hunger, a thirst, a latent desire for something that is more substantial. Laurie has compared the slow lit or slow journalism movement to the slow food movement, you know, something more organic.

Ochoa: We are trying to keep print alive, but in order to do that -- we both worked at magazine throughout our careers and we love those -- it’s also time to shift things around.

The form of a newspaper is changing, magazines are changing, but this is something to have people stop and remember that long form narrative is something that we don’t want to lose sight of. Our house style is the opposite of the usual house style. We like to have individual voices so that from one page to the next you don’t necessarily know what’s going to come next. 

Donnelly: Also, in this world of the Internet, the shorter and quicker -- narrative is more experience and empathy driven. And to be quality citizens, to be involved in your community and in your world and your life, it helps to have empathy. I am almost entirely not interested in tweets and yelps. I tolerate facebook because t helps promote stuff. I like to read and I like to think and I like to be moved and that’s one of the experiences we’re trying to provide.

You said that Slake is long form journalism. Does that mean it is non-fiction? 

Ochoa: There is both, it is a mixture, but the fiction is also LA based or feels like Los Angeles. We include poetry and the photo essays are really important. We figure, if you’re going to have print right now, it’s not enough to just have good writing that you can get online, it’s a way of presenting it. In print you can take more time. But in addition, you want something that is really seductive about the book itself, you want to hold it; you want to look through it.

My fantasy is that someone would buy it and read it and keep it and look through it and then come back to it again and again. In some magazines, people don’t read every single article; hey throw it away because it is time for the next one. 

Donnelly: It’s not the length; it’s more about story telling. That’s really what we are interested in, old-fashioned story telling. Story telling is basically really at the heart of identity, of cultural identity, or civic identity. So if you loose your story telling, you kind of loose your sense of self. 

Ochoa: Information is not everything. Information is good, you go to the web for breaking news, but then there is this other thing where it gets to be almost like junk food where you get too hopped up on that and want to slow down and enjoy the moment too.

The reporting is so important to tell a story – but then, in order to have a piece of reporting connect with people -- you need the scenes, the things that open it up a little, where you can relate to someone or something happening in front of you, where you need to slow down and not just tell the information, but show the information, show why it’s important. 

Is being local to LA or the area one criterion that gets you into the book? 

Donnelly: Sort of. We have a contributor from New York in the first issue and someone who is in Mexico, but the common thread is that it feels like it’s of Los Angeles, from Los Angeles. Not necessarily for Los Angeles, because we like to say that Los Angeles is bigger than Los Angeles, it’s international.

How do you find your contributors or how do they find you?

Ochoa: It’s a two-way process. With the publicity we got for the first issue came so many submissions through the website. And we do go out and talk about it with everyone we meet. 

Donnelly: Also, we have been doing this combined for – I don’t want to say for how many years – and we both built up a lot of good will over the years and know a lot of people and they know people. The hard part is not getting submissions; the hard part is getting the ones we really want. We really want to be a strong repository for good journalism as well as memoire and fiction.

Ochoa: We’ve got so many fiction pieces and memoires. And you want that in there, but that can’t be all we are about. The hardest thing is to get the great journalism and that’s not the easy thing for people to do. Good journalism in Los Angeles does contract ant that’s one thing we are really pushing to do.

Can you describe the process of how an issue is created? 

Donnelly: Painstakingly. 

Ochoa: It takes longer. It’s bizarre because we are used to working fast, but we are working very slowly. And a part of it is that it’s not that hard to get pieces to fill the issue. It is hard to then shape them in a way that is pleasing both the writer and us. It its important that it fits into the sensibility of what we’re trying to do and have a very high level of quality. If you’re going to come out four times a year, you really want those things.

Donnelly: Our standards are very high, but we put the same time and care and attention into every piece. And the idea isn’t to make them ours, but to help the writers realize their vision to the utmost. 

Since it is only the two of you, do you always agree on which story you want in the magazine or the book and do you have a policy that describes what happens if you don’t?

Donnelly: The truth of the matter is: both of us are pretty stubborn. If we insist on something, the other person has to find a way to work with that. But we don’t have many disagreements on what is worthwhile or not. 

Ochoa: And then I think the thing is to not just say ‘oh, then I’m not even going to read that part,’ you then come in and have good suggestions to make it something better. It’s fun! 

This project is something you wanted to do for a long time. How long did it actually take from the time Laurie got on board to the first issue coming out?

Donnelly: Well, from the time Laurie got on board things happened a lot faster. It was still just an idea until Laurie came around. Then it became something real and it happened pretty quickly after that because there was someone there who was willing to just go ahead and do something rather than talk about it endlessly.

Ochoa: We have been pretty successful selling this and getting on the bestseller list and all that, but you can’t tell people that you’re going to do that because they don’t believe you. You can’t tell someone that more than 500 people are going to show up at your launch party and buy some of the art. It’s a hard thing to proof that people are still interested in print.

Most of the people who come to our events are pretty young. There is something happening where people are wanting something in print. This idea that people are only interested in celebrity culture is not true.

How did you finance the first issue? You also need to live and pay rent.

Ochoa: Joe was able to put in some of his own money.

Donnelly: We have a plan of what we want to do and where we want to go. And at some point this paradigm that we are working on right now will have to shift, we are going to need some investment to get to where we want to go. Neither of us is getting paid. 

Ochoa: Magazine readership is actually up. And it’s up in the 18 to 34 demographic. It’s counter intuitive; people would be surprised to hear that, but every indication, every mark of readership is up in magazines. Newspapers have a whole other problem that is different than magazines.

We know what we want to do and we are very clear with ourselves about what kind of stories we want to put out there. We want to grow into book publishing, and grow a really interesting website, but we need to establish who we are first. The quarterly is a really important way of doing that. 

Is there a lot of word of mouth?

Donnelly: A lot, yeah. The one thing that helps is that it’s really, really good. Our standards are high and our goals are high. I think that’s one of the things that people are responding to.

We are giving them something that’s good for them, but it also tastes good. A lot of the times you get stuff and you are really glad when you’ve put yourself through the task of reading that. But it doesn’t have to hurt that much. It can be fun. 

One thing we wanted to capture is the essence of Los Angeles -- and that is that you don’t have to be boring to be smart. You don’t have to be institutional to be smart. You can be accessible and you can be smart. You can be exciting and you can be smart. You can be seductive and you can be smart. It’s really that great mix of highbrow and lowbrow.

 

The second issue of Slake hits shelves this week and is available at Vroman's bookstore in Pasadena, Above the Fold bookstand in Santa Monica and Book Soup in West Hollywood. For a detailed list of retailers go to slake.la.

Reach books editor Jessica Donath here.