Atavist

via The New York Observer:

When the journalist David Dobbs first had the idea of writing an article about his mother’s love affair with a flight surgeon during World War II, he initially went the traditional route: he pitched the story to several magazines. Mr. Dobbs, who has written for The New York Times Magazine, Wired and National Geographic, usually writes about science, so the piece was a bit of a departure. The magazines he approached turned him down. He suspected at the time that the scale of the story was one problem—it was a complicated tale, hard to fit in a magazine, even at 6,000 or 8,000 words. Dedicated to his story despite the rejections, Mr. Dobbs started talking to Evan Ratliff, editor and co-founder of the online startup The Atavist, a self-described “boutique publishing house” that produces non-fiction articles for e-readers and smart phones.  Initially one selling point was the possibility of writing a longer story: The Atavist publishes “nonfiction stories that are longer than magazine articles but shorter than books,” ranging in length from 10,000 to 20,000 words.

By Carolyn Kellogg

The complexity of this novella-length nonfiction story dovetails perfectly with its multimedia elements. Sometimes they even serve as a counterpoint — Lewis’ altered state resonates more deeply after seeing videos of the films he worked on in the 1980s — “Slipping Into Darkness” and “C.H.U.D. II: Bud the C.H.U.D.” Lewis’ story is sprawling and fascinating and is told with sensitivity and intelligence by Colin.

We’ve had offices in DUMBO for about three months now and we may outgrow them soon. Our new senior editor, Alissa Quart, started last week. Alissa is the author of two non-fiction books, Branded (Basic Books, 2003) and Hothouse Kids (Penguin Press, 2006), and has written long-form pieces for Mother Jones, The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, and many other publications. She was a 2010 Nieman Fellow at Harvard, is a contributing editor and columnist for Columbia Journalism Review, and teaches at Columbia School of Journalism.

Alissa joins a team that grew over the summer to include Stefanie Syman, our head of business development and strategy. Stefanie is a writer, editor, and entrepreneur with deep experience in the world of digital publishing. In 1995, she was the co-founder and founding editor of FEED, an award-winning Web magazine. In 2000, she was part of the creative team that founded Plastic.com, a content and community site focused on pop culture. In 2005, as editorial director, she helped launch lime.com, a site focused on healthy living and sustainability. She is the author of The Subtle Body (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), the surprising story of yoga’s transformation from a centuries-old spiritual discipline to a multibillion-dollar American industry. Her work has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, and Vogue.

Another summer addition to our permanent staff is producer Olivia Koski. Olivia worked as a laser engineer and technology transition specialist at Lockheed Martin until moving to New York to complete a master’s in Science Journalism at New York University. Her writing has appeared in Wired and Popular Mechanics, and she has lectured about the fiction and science of laser weapons at science cafes around New York. She is an associate of the U.K.-based performance outreach group Guerilla Science and is a collaborative fellow at UnionDocs, a Center for Documentary Art in Brooklyn.