Welcome to Raft, a Magazine for People Who Love the Arts

Critical Read has a new look.

Dear Reader,

Thank you for subscribing to Critical Read’s newsletter. I hope this note finds you well and your 2022 off to a great start.

I want to let you know about a few changes here.

First, Critical Read has moved to Substack. Our stories will now be sent directly to subscribers upon publication, via email. This saves us the work of publishing and then promoting our stories in a separate newsletter.

Second, our essays will now be published under the name Raft. Our mission is still the same: to make American art and art history inclusive and discoverable. The name is new. It was time for a change.

We’re launching Raft with three free series:

Life Raft. 300-word art appreciations. These essays began as Art Is Essential and were focused on the art that writers were missing during the pandemic lockdowns. We’re continuing this very popular series under a new name.

The Paddle. Longer ekphrastic essays. Our somewhat humorously named series on living the creative life. This series will also feature audio.

Open Canon. Profiles of American artists you might not know but should.

Later this year we’ll bring you a series of explanatory articles on Web Monetization. This project, Web Monetization for the Arts, is funded by Grant for the Web. (Yes, we received a grant!) Are you an artist or arts administrator looking to make money from your digital content? This series of articles and tutorials will show you how.

You can find our E-books at Raft. And we mean to keep in better touch via our Editor’s Notes such as this one.

If you are a writer and your work was published at criticalread.org, the link to your work will remain the same. We will be archiving the old site. You may request to have your work moved to Raft. Contact us at mail@criticalread.org.

Writers interested in submitting essays or pitching us stories can do so using our Submittable page.

Thank you. We’re looking forward to delivering the stories of the arts to you.