Vol. I · Autumn Issue
N° 001 · The Purple Journal

Purple.

 a journal for women who take themselves seriously
About the paper

A small paper, made carefully, for women who read slowly.

Purple is an unhurried journal on the interior life of the modern woman. We publish one long essay a month, one short note a week, and the occasional unhurried interview. Everything is free. There is no algorithm and no advertisement on the page.

The paper is edited by women, for women, but we do not write about "women's issues" in the trade-magazine sense of that phrase. We write about ambition, solitude, style, tenderness, and the ordinary rooms where a life is quietly made. If you have a piece you think belongs here, write to the address below.

A vintage armchair upholstered in deep purple velvet with an open book on the seat, warm afternoon window light

The editorial principles

A short list
Principle I

Interior over aspirational.

We do not write about houses we cannot afford or lives we do not live. We write about the rooms, mornings, and small decisions that make up a real interior life. If a piece could equally have been a car ad, we do not run it.

Principle II

Adults, not girls.

Our reader is a grown woman navigating an actual life. We do not do "self-improvement," ten-step plans, or the kind of soft condescension that most women's writing has been surviving for a hundred years. We assume our reader can handle a sentence with more than one idea in it.

Principle III

Elegance is the shortest way through.

A good essay is short. Almost nothing worth saying about a woman's life takes more than 2,000 words. When it does, we take the space. Otherwise we don't.

Principle IV

Honesty before flattery.

The most useful writing on a woman's life is the writing that says the thing you were hoping someone would say and quietly did not want to hear. We try, hard, to be that.

Principle V

No advice from strangers on the internet.

The pieces we publish are written from experience — a specific woman's, a specific year of her life. If we do not have someone who has actually lived it, we do not run the essay.

Principle VI

Slow is a feature.

Purple publishes twice a week on purpose. There is no feed to feed. There is no notification. You either open the paper when you feel like opening it, or you do not — and either is fine with us.

In editorial partnership

Dear Jane — our sister paper.

Purple runs in editorial partnership with Dear Jane — a private community for adults who want more than what mainstream apps deliver. We occasionally cross-publish; we do not share subscriber data. If you enjoy Purple and are looking for the kind of people we tend to write about, that is where you will find them.

Visit Dear Jane
Write to the paper

We read every letter.

Pitches, corrections, disagreements, unsolicited essays. We answer within a week.

editor@prple.co