The Key launched with an essay by the new magazine’s editor in chief Sara Yasin called “It’s Not Complicated.” The essay is part reflection, part media criticism, part thesis statement for the publication, and Yasin’s opening line rolls all of these themes into one, crisp sentence:

“When you are in Palestine, you see things exactly as they are.”

The Key takes this simple observation as both assumption and challenge: Palestine is worth covering unapologetically, according to their mission statement, “as the core issue at the heart of the modern world.”

The magazine debuted with some wonderful writing. In addition to Yasin’s essay, The Key published two poems by poet and journalist Tamara Nassar and a beautiful essay on the contrapuntal and living between two world’s by poet and translator Alaa Alqaisi.

I had a long talk with Yasin to talk about her vision for the magazine, and how it was inspired by her experiences as a journalist and editor at BuzzFeed News and the Los Angeles Times, as a Muslim and Palestinian American in a post-9/11 America, and as a writer with values. (Our longer conversation will be on the next episode of the Lit Hub Podcast)

The Key is publishing in partnership with the Palestine Festival of Literature, a literary organization that Yasin has worked with since 2013, after meeting the novelist and PalFest co-founder Ahdaf Soueif and getting the opportunity to travel and write in Palestine. The Festival also put Yasin in touch with a community of other publications, writers, and editors who have been similarly clear eyed on Palestine.

“I was very shaped by PalFest’s approach,” she said, which aims to offer a fuller picture to readers. “The fact that they didn’t start from, ‘Let’s break all of your myths’ is really immersing the writers in not just understanding what’s happening, but in really connecting with people,” Yasin said.

This community of like-minded folks has been foundational for The Key‘s team, and Yasin was careful to stress that the publication isn’t claiming to be the only voice responding to legacy media’s failures in covering Palestine.

“There were just so many publications and places and people who have had the kind of bravery that teed it up for something like The Key,” Yasin said, “I don’t think anything like The Key would exist without people pushing the door open.”

In organizing events for PalFest after leaving the LA Times, Yasin encountered an audience with a clear desire for “literary focused spaces to explore these ideas.” Plus, she saw more honest and uncompromising work in literary spaces, as opposed to journalists who were in large part still frustratingly calcified. The idea of pushing for change in static news organizations from within seem fruitless. Even starting conversations sometimes felt onerous for Yasin.

“Untangling that did not seem to be an interesting problem to solve,” she said, “You’re sitting there going, ‘Well I’m just negotiating finer points, and actually this thing is much bigger.’”

And despite accusations to the contrary, this wasn’t Yasin trying to be an activist. She simply wanted to do her job correctly, and wanted others to do the same.

“I want to be a journalist because I want to tell the truth, report things as they are, and do things to a high standard,” she said, “And if I’m not able to do that, then I’m complicit in the things that we’re covering incorrectly.”

Ultimately, the work she wanted to do needed to happen “outside of a mainstream newsroom,” she continued. “And so for me, PalFest felt like the right place to do that because it’s anchored in the same values that I share… doing high quality, very accessible work, but that has very clear and uncompromising values.”

But the values can quickly become secondary if there’s nowhere to publish, and Palestine remains a topic met with reluctance and outright hostility from many large news and media outlets. A lot of writers who might otherwise find a home in mainstream publications instead “find themselves blackballed or they want to boycott these places,” Yasin told me.

“On a very practical level,” she said, “we need to have more places for these people to publish their work that actually pays them.”

“I got sick of saying, ‘Why hasn’t anyone published this?’”

Yasin envisions The Key as a vibrant space for those writers doing work that deserves a prominent platform, and though it’s still early days, she has lots of exciting stuff planned. Her team is gathering writing from political prisoners, media criticism from inside mainstream newsrooms, stories of Hollywood censorship, profiles of the former head of Addameer and of a Palestinian rapper, poetry, and lots more. And the site looks great too, thanks to designer David Pearson.

Yasin is hoping to keep subscriptions low—it’s $2 a month right now—which keeps the writing accessible and, as Yasin put it, “creates a little more of a connection.”

The Key will keep a focus on Palestine, which has emerged as a central issue in so many conversations since October 7th and the genocide began. For Yasin and the whole team, this goes beyond a question of journalistic priorities and values—though Palestine is undoubtedly a vital story, as Israel’s brutality is ongoing and the Western world’s inability to stand up to genocide and war has created permission for further escalations. (As of this writing, Israel and the United States are bombing most of the Gulf, settler expansion in the West Bank is escalating, and Israel has forced at least 700,000 people from southern Lebanon at gunpoint, and on, and on.)

Palestine is central, a galvanizing idea that inspires, echos, and reveals. When we look at Palestine, we look at the world.

“What are the things you cover if the baseline is someone thinks that not only is a genocide happening, but that genocide is wrong?” Yasin said, “What does it mean to tell stories if the goal isn’t, ‘You have to humanize Palestinians?’”

The post » Sara Yasin’s new digital magazine, The Key, will center Palestine. appeared first on Our Story Insight.

Lit Hub Editor in Chief Jonny Diamond Would
Like You to Become a Member

As we hurtle toward the end of a dismally eventful year (yes, we live in interesting times), those of us in what remains of America’s independent media are poring over budgets past, present, and future with one thought in mind: keep going.

Literary Hub turned ten this year, which is basically forty in website years (but not 44, thankfully), and inasmuch as it’s been an ugly and convulsive decade in the broader world, it’s been pretty bad for online media, too. Sadly, all of us still here on the internet in 2025 rely on billionaire-driven tech platforms to find our readers, and your average Silicon Valley “thought” leader is way more concerned with his luxury bolt hole than the fate of a website about books. In fact, I would go so far as to say that our digital tech overlords value most of us only insofar as we contribute actual human content to their voracious AI slop maw.

Look, the digital ad model was never a great one (incentivizing as it always has the clickbait-iest of content) but now that AI is summarizing everyone’s work, it’s much, much worse. (Don’t get me started on AI’s environmental costs.)

Nevertheless, we persist, and we do so without compromising our editorial integrity. To that end, here are some things we don’t do:

We don’t chase algorithmic virality (though it never hurts to have the word porn in a headline)
We don’t juice our traffic or subscriber numbers
We don’t use AI (though it’s harder these days to avoid it on the aforementioned publishing platforms)
We don’t ever buy followers or emails
We don’t steal other people’s work to make money

And here are some things we do:

Feature the best books published today
Amplify the best living writers
Provide resources for aspiring writers
Amplify the smartest (and most esoteric!) nonfiction out there
Cover ongoing efforts to destroy book culture in the United States
Have fun doing it!

We are a collection of (human!) book-lovers who work tirelessly to preserve and celebrate that which makes us all too human: the essential and eternal need to tell stories (the very same stories that AI tech companies have been stealing for a decade).

And we need your help to keep doing that. Over the last few years our membership program has become an increasingly large percentage of our annual revenue—which is great—but we need to keep growing it. As the things that matter most are valued less and less by the people in power, it is only through individual contributions from readers like you that any of this—an independent media, by humans, for humans—can survive.

Please help if you can.

The post » It’s Harder and Harder to Be a Magazine on the Internet—Please Help appeared first on Our Story Insight.

George Plimpton, impresario founder of The Paris Review, has a literary legacy that keeps on giving. Now, fans of the man can peep into his old townhouse. Otherwise known as the OG offices of America’s OG literary magazine.

The storied casa listed in April for a cool $5.25 million. But times are hard—as anyone in publishing today can tell you—and there’s been a recent notable dip in the asking price. Now, you can enjoy 60 feet of East River views and 60 years of literary lore for basically a steal.

The Plimptons were known for their parties. George’s notable guest lists scan like outtake verses of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” From Sinatra to Beatty to Truman Capote, from Rolling Stones to senators—this breakfast nook has seen it all. 

As Sarah Dudley Plimpton told the Times: “I don’t even know how many times I had to clean up vomit in the bathroom or watch people put out cigarettes on our Oriental rugs…My home was always inundated.”

Picture Andy Warhol scowling in the corner of the billiards room. But wait, first—picture a billiards room! In a publisher’s office!

Likely, if you’re reading this, this sweet little “Black and White” is a bit outside your price range. But re-circling just in case you know an arts lover with 5 mil to drop on a vanity fair this holiday season.

In the meantime, let 2026 herald the return of book people who can hold down a mortgage. (And throw down, at a glamorous soiree.)

Images via, via

The post » Want to start a literary magazine? The original Paris Review offices are for sale. appeared first on Our Story Insight.