What I’m really interested in trying to do with Sex is bring people from different diverse pockets of culture into the same place. Nothing we curate is too matchy-matchy. I believe that diversity means something to people and it’s actually something people want.

TESS POLLOK: You’re a writer and filmmaker, you’re also the editor of Sex Mag. I love Sex; everything about your publication is a huge inspiration to me. I’m dying to hear your thoughts on indie publishing–how do we make this a profitable enterprise? Where do you see the industry headed? Substack?

ASHER PENN: Substack is so weird. I think if you’re a novelist or a blogger it’s a fantastic platform, but beyond that, it’s so uncustomizable that to suggest it’s the future of magazines is taking so much of the joy out of publishing. So much of it is in the design, the experience of the magazine as an object, even the aesthetics of a website. Substack just another form of social media, a container you’re filling with content. Every magazine designs its own frame.

POLLOK: I feel exactly the same way. I’ve found that for my friends who are journalists, it’s been great because it democratized access to publishing and it allowed them to bypass industry gatekeepers like major publishing conglomerates. But from an indie publishing perspective, it all just looks really similar. It takes away from the experience of crafting a cool art object.

PENN: I was talking to a friend recently who’d bought the magazine and he was telling me how much he appreciated being able to sit down and read it. He said that for that hour of his day, it was all he needed to be entertained. That’s really one of the goals of this project. The design and layout of Sex is supposed to be a legible experience that you can have in real life. I’m a huge fan of Richard Turley and admire everything he’s done at Interview, but I really struggle to read the physical magazine - and maybe thats the point - Interview isn’t meant to be read, it’s meant to be flipped through.

POLLOK: I like that you brought up Richard Turley. I love Civilization. That’s another publishing project I find really inspirational. Have you ever read the typography magazine Type One? That’s another favorite of mine from a graphic design standpoint. That’s a magazine where I’m, like, I wish my magazine looked like this.

PENN: Publishing today is challenging. Magazines aren’t being produced at as rapid clip like they used to, nor at the scale that they used to be, and the quality is just–well, confusing. I was really excited to read the new issue of Cosmopolitan because of their new editor Willa Bennett. The fact that Richard Kern shot the cover and I could buy it at a drug store, that was really exciting and new. But, again, there’s something with the layout and typefaces and paper and printing that doesn’t carry the same texture we had 15, 20 years ago. I feel like we’ve collectively forgotten how to do that. Then again, I don’t know if I could redesign Sex if someone asked me to. It’s a format that works.

POLLOK: I feel like culture is a lot more atomized now. The ecosystems of how people consume media feel smaller to me now, and more closed off from one another. It’s harder to have a publishing project that is broadly accessible in the way that projects used to be.

PENN: It’s hard to wrap your head around what celebrity is today.I realized we’ve actually never put the names of the people on the covers themselves, which is an industry standard thing to do. But we’re banking on a certain level of cultural literacy and that’s the barrier to entry. Like, yeah, to read this you have to know who Sam Hyde is, you have to know who Anna Khachiyan is, you have to know who 100 gecs are. What I find difficult is understanding the scale of your audience. You can’t really use social media as a barometer, because engagement can be deceptive.

With Sex, I’m trying to bring people from different diverse pockets of culture into the same place. I never curate anything that’s too matchy-matchy. But it’s harder to do that then it sounds. I like that you used the word atomized, because artists don’t really cross-pollinate in the way that they used to. They’re much more sensitive to affiliation. Curating an entire magazine around the tastes or affiliations of a single artist or single publisher would completely ruin the whole thing.

POLLOK: You’re right that it’s really revolving around shifting notions of celebrity. Having Anna Khachiyan on the cover without mentioning her by name: is that really a crazy thing to do? I would honestly argue that people who are popular on Twitter or popular on Instagram, who are established micro-celebrities in that way, come with a huge cachet. It’s not as much of a gamble to do something like that as you might think. A lot of those people actually are household names.

PENN: Right, but then the new paranoia becomes: am I just in a bubble?

POLLOK: Completely.

PENN: I remember printing the issue that featured Million Dollar Extreme on the cover. We print the magazine at a place that usually just handles real estate brochures. But a guy working there asked “is this your magazine?” I said, “yeah.” He was like, “That’s awesome. I fuck with Sam Hyde.” That was an eye opening moment.

POLLOK: Do you personally curate the features in Sex?

PENN: For the most part, yes. I take suggestions from colleagues and editors sometimes. But I always make the final selection of who’s going to be in the magazine.

POLLOK: Do you like everyone you put in Sex? You don’t have to answer that.

PENN: When Sex first launched, it was supposed to be me and my graphic designer doing it together as partners. But he backed out a month before we launched. He said he didn’t want to do it because his own personal taste was just too esoteric, too specific. A huge part of publishing is being able to put aside your own interests for a bigger audience. Like Drain Gang. I’m not personally a member of the fandom, the way that some of our readers are, but I was 100% willing to put them on the cover, because I knew that was what people wanted and it was aligned with the magazine. If I’m just going by my personal taste, I’m just putting Anton from Brian Jonestown Massacre on the cover. Not sure how well that will sell.

POLLOK: I’ve had to deal with that working in publishing. Sometimes people don’t understand that everything you do is supposed to be in the service of the work. You have to have that as your baseline energy because it motivates all the different decisions you make later. It’s about cultivating the ability to put a bunch of moving parts together to create something that’s coherent versus just being able to talk about something you like.

PENN: The creative landscape is set up right now so that everybody is their own magazine, everybody is their own podcast, everybody is their own cultural hub. Sometimes I worry I’m going against the grain to my own detriment. But then I keep on receiving positive feedback about Sex and people telling me they want more projects like this in the world.

POLLOK: How long have you been editing Sex?

PENN: I started the magazine in 2012. It was initially launched as just a website. We did 10 quarterly issues, which was insane, and then I got burnt out. Then we ran it as a blog for three years and I got even more burnt out. We relaunched it in 2019 as a print-only publication. Since then, we’ve been doing annual publications.

POLLOK: Do you conduct all of the interviews yourself?

PENN: Mostly. A friend of mine pointed out that the credits at the end of Sex look like a Vincent Gallo movie–you know how those are like, “Written by Vincent Gallo, Directed by Vincent Gallo, Starring Vincent Gallo?” In general, I do the interviews, but with expediency in mind, sometimes it’s easier or faster to use someone else. Sometimes it also makes more sense to have a super fan in there because they’ll have better context for conducting the interview. But f I’m not conducting the interview, most of the time I’m editing it.

POLLOK: What’s your approach to the interview format? How do you get what you want from it?

PENN: Maybe it’s boring but I always go for a biographical arc. I’m not interested in hot takes or the latest gossip or the latest thing. It’s always “Where are you from? What was it like? Were you a creative child?” I’m in 12-step and the arc of a share is always the same - you hear the same story over and over again, and you’re never bored. I mean, I love a good interview where it’s just two friends who are shooting the shit and riffing. That’s a lot of fun. But I think biographical angles are the easiest for people to engage with because it’s naturally and immediately appealing as a story. I appreciate hearing people talk about how they got into things, how certain doors opened for them and what led to what.

POLLOK: I’ve struggled with how much presence you’re supposed to have as an interviewer. The issue I have with the biographical format is that it can almost feel like a computer is asking the person, Are you from x? What was x like for you? I sometimes get more interesting responses when I’m more human and more willing to share experiences of my own, that’s when someone I’m interviewing will open up with something unexpected that is usually really interesting. But, you also don’t want the interview to be too filled up with your own yammering. So, I don’t know.

PENN: When I was younger I was just obsessed with hearing the sound of my own voice. When I got older, I felt more like I wanted to disappear. But you’ve got to bleed on the table a little bit. You’ve got to be willing to be a little bit vulnerable so that the other people are willing to be vulnerable as well.

I wish there was a word for this thing that we’re talking about, because we’re not journalists, we’re not PR agents. Being able to create space for conversation with an artist where they can actually communicate their message is a real service both to the artist and the world. It’s not a space for hard-hitting journalism where your function is to chip away at the illusion of who somebody is. There’s something really special about the goal being to get an artist to be communicative and vulnerable in a way they might not feel compelled to do otherwise.

POLLOK: What do you consider the greatest era of print magazines?

PENN: 2000 to 2004. That was the golden age. Index Magazine, Purple. Dune, edited by Charlie Brown. BUTT Magazine. Part of what made that period so interesting was that there were so many high functioning magazines running at the time, publications like Rolling Stone and Nylon were coming out once a month, and then something like Purple would come out quarterly with just, like, 20 pages of images with no text on them at all. There was just such an interesting contrast. People also had great design literacy then and advertisers were pouring a shitload of money into their budgets–ad campaigns would be shot by, like, David LaChapelle. You’d be able to go to the second floor of the bookstore and there’d be rows and rows of magazines that you’d be able to look at. I think what’s going on with magazine publishing today is not dissimilar from what’s happening in the film industry. In film, you’re not seeing too many financially successful movies right now, so the overall quality just kind of dips. That’s also happening in publishing.

POLLOK: There are a lot of smaller publications out right now that I really admire. I love the Opioid Crisis Lookbook and Synchron Mag.

PENN: I love Opioid Crisis Lookbook. Can that be the final shout out of the interview? Chris Habib. You’re the best.

Asher Penn is a Canadian writer, filmmaker, and the editor of Sex Mag.

Tess Pollok is a writer and the Editor-in-Chief of Animal Blood.