About the Publication
A small editorial atelier founded in 2019 in a converted barn on Mill Pond Lane — publishing slow essays, guided journaling, and craft teaching for writers who treat the page as a place of attention, not output.
A Founder's Note
From a Hudson barn, a slower kind of reading room.
I started Reflective Inklings in the autumn of 2019, in the back room of a converted dairy barn on Mill Pond Lane, because I wanted a place on the internet that read the way the books on my shelf feel in the hand. No autoplaying videos. No infinite scroll. No chart telling an editor in California what a sentence in Iowa ought to look like. Just essays, and the silence around them.
The conviction, then as now, was simple: writing is a way of seeing, not a content output. A page is a small piece of attention we offer one another, and it deserves to be set with care. Every issue since has been hand-typeset in Garamond Premier Pro. Every illustration has been commissioned from a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design. Every essay has been read, twice, by a human being whose name appears in the colophon.
Five years and six volumes later, we are a small editorial collective of seven, supported by twenty-three contributing writers and fourteen commissioned illustrators. Our archive holds more than two hundred and forty thousand words of original literary work, and our weekly letter, The Inkwell, is read by people in forty-seven countries who, like us, have come to believe that slowness is not a luxury but a discipline.
This page is a short, honest account of who we are, how we came to be, and the publishing principles we keep. If you find yourself at home in the room we are trying to keep open, the door is the small form at the bottom of this page.
— Mira Hollowell, founder & editor in chief
Hudson, New York · December 2024
Editorial Board
The stewards of the room.
A small, named roster — including two former editors from Tin House and a clinical psychologist specializing in narrative therapy — who read every piece the publication prints.
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01
Mira Hollowell
Founder & Editor in Chief
Essayist and the publication's principal voice. Founded the journal in 2019 from a converted barn in Hudson; named a "Quiet Internet Champion" by The Atlantic in 2024.
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02
Wren Castellanos
Senior Editor, Essays
Former senior editor at Tin House, where she edited literary nonfiction for nine years. Leads the essay desk and chairs the Pushcart nomination committee.
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03
August Lindqvist
Editor at Large, Craft
Former nonfiction editor at Tin House. Teaches the craft column and edits the annual Inkling Annual print zine, which has sold out every issue since 2020.
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04
Dr. Naomi Okafor
Consulting Editor, Practice
Clinical psychologist (PhD, Columbia) specializing in narrative therapy. Reviews the journaling and practice columns and advises on the 90-Day Mirror Journal program.
Recognition & Adoption
A short colophon of editorial proof.
Awards, press, and institutional use — read in one breath, the way a masthead credit page is meant to be read.
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2022
Pushcart Prize — Special Mention
For online literary nonfiction, recognizing two essays published in Volume III.
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2023
Write Bloody Essay Award
Awarded to the publication's "On Returning to the Page" — the first win by an independent digital quarterly.
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2021 — 2023
Longreads — Top 10 Indie Lit Sites
Three consecutive years on the annual list of independent literary publications.
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2024
The Atlantic — "Quiet Internet Champion"
Founder Mira Hollowell profiled for the publication's deliberately old-web reading environment.
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Adoption
38 University Creative Writing Programs
Including Iowa, Columbia, and Brown — the archive is used as supplementary reading in undergraduate and graduate seminars.
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Partner
National Association of Writers in Education
Trusted publishing partner of the NAWE since 2021.
The Editorial Covenant
A reading room without surveillance.
We have, by deliberate choice, built a reading environment that no longer exists almost anywhere else on the open web. There is no algorithmic feed. There are no pop-ups. There are no third-party trackers measuring your time on this page. The reason is editorial, not technical: we believe the shape of a room shapes what can be thought inside it.
A page that is being measured cannot entirely be read. A page that is being optimized cannot entirely be written. By removing the metering, we remove the quiet coercion that comes with it — the temptation to interrupt an essay with a prompt, to interrupt a journaler with an upsell, to interrupt a reader with the small, persistent suspicion that they are the product.
We do not write for an algorithm. We do not write for a chart. We write for the reader who arrived on purpose and would like, for a few quiet minutes, to be left alone with a piece of attention. That reader is you. Welcome to the room.
The Inkwell
Step into the Inkwell.
A free weekly letter from the barn — one slow essay, one journaling prompt, and a single piece of craft teaching, sent Sunday mornings to readers in forty-seven countries. No advertising. No tracking. Yours to leave at any time.
We will never share your address. You can unsubscribe in a single click. Read by 19,400 writers and quiet readers.