Getting started Welcome to Palimpsest: What We Publish and Why Palimpsest is an independent magazine of essays and criticism on culture and technology. Here is what we publish, how often it arrives, and what a subscription includes...
Getting started How We Edit: The Palimpsest Editorial Process Every essay we publish goes through two full edits, a fact-check, and a final proof. Here is what happens to a piece between the first draft and the day it reaches subscribers...
Getting started How We Organize the Archive: A Guide to Tags Every piece on Palimpsest is filed by tag rather than by section. This guide explains how the tag system works, how to browse by topic, and how to follow the subjects you care about...
Getting started Editorial Roles at an Independent Magazine How a small editorial publication actually runs: what contributors, editors, and the publisher are each responsible for, and why every role ultimately answers to the reader...
Getting started How We Use Private Posts for Works in Progress Before an essay is published, it circulates as a private post: a draft visible only to the editors and a small group of early readers. Here is how that stage works and why we keep it...
Getting started Markdown for Writers: Footnotes and Code A practical guide to the Markdown features we use in every essay: strikethrough and highlights for revision, fenced code blocks, full-bleed images, reference links, footnotes, and inline HTML...
Getting started The Design of Palimpsest: Typography and Layout Palimpsest is designed for long-form reading: a book-weight serif, a measured line length, and a restrained palette. Here are the specific choices behind the page and the reasons for each...
Fables The Businessman and the Fisherman A retelling of the classic parable: a management consultant on holiday meets a fisherman whose one small boat supports his family, and offers him a plan for growth...
Style Test: Every Element This Theme Supports A reference post that renders every element the theme styles — headings, lists, tables, code blocks, blockquotes, forms, and embeds — so you can check typography and spacing after any change...
Speeches Why Great Speeches Don't Work on the Page Transcripts of famous speeches read as overwrought prose, yet the same words moved crowds. How oratory actually works: pauses as punctuation, repetition as error correction, and the crowd as co-author...
Speeches The Purpose of Education: A Graduation Address A school asked me to address its graduating class, and the invitation raises the question every such speech must answer: what was all of this teaching actually for...
Fiction Unreliable Narrators in Adventure Fiction From Tarzan to Frankenstein, classic adventure fiction opens by confessing its sources are bad. Why the frame narrative persuades readers, what it actually delivers, and why the same device now runs half the internet...
Fiction Writing Lessons from Through the Looking-Glass A close reading of the first chapter of Through the Looking-Glass: how Carroll builds a fantasy from a blind spot, what 'Let's pretend' reveals about how fiction works, and why the White King's pencil is the best account of drafting ever written...
Fiction Rereading Alice in Wonderland as an Adult A close reading of the first chapter of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: why Carroll slows the fall, how he treats curiosity without punishment, and the jokes about rules and education that only land on a second reading...
The Gettysburg Address: A Lesson in Brevity Edward Everett spoke at Gettysburg for two hours; Lincoln spoke for two minutes, and only Lincoln's 272 words are remembered. What the address teaches any writer about finding the central idea...
