It started with love. In 2016, The New Territory launched as a longform print magazine for Lower Midwesterners who are hungry to understand the Great Plains and Ozarks. Our narrative journalism, creative writing, photography and art give readers a way to experience dynamic places, learn history through multiple lenses, think in metaphors, and hear personal stories of life’s challenges — in a distraction-free, beautifully designed, 128-page full color print format. Today, we are proud to say we’ve worked with more than 350 regional writers and artists (and counting!), publish twice a year, and relaunched as a 501(c)3 nonprofit. 

In a region often dismissed as “Flyover Country,” people here are defining borders by watersheds and ecotypes at least as much as state lines. We introduce readers to people like them, who care about and work in the natural world.

But The New Territory is about cultural diversity and engaged citizenry as much as biodiversity. It’s for people who see individuals for who they are, who believe a sense of belonging in a place is possible no matter where they started, and who support others in their quests for belonging. 

Read our magazine’s founding principles →

The magazine’s collaboration has grown and spread slowly and carefully over the seasons, finding its right place in the hills, plains, and bookshelves of Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Northwest Arkansas, Southern Illinois, Iowa and beyond. When it feels right, we color outside those border lines.  

The New Territory is our flagship program, and first focus, with volunteer editors supporting a broad range of deep-thinking sections, including longform narrative journalism about The Lower Midwest; poetry, short stories, and creative nonfiction by writers from the Great Plains and Ozarks; reviews of regionally themed books, media, and events; a section on food and philosophy; highlights of small Midwest makers and products; full-spread photography, and more. Recent features have covered a multi-hyphenate rural trans woman running for the Missouri state legislature, citizen scientists studying bumblebees, Black cowboys in Kansas, a poet devoted to the River des Peres, and an award-winning story of an artist hub in Yellville, Arkansas.

Recent years have seen the launch of our occasional email newsletter The Dabbler and Literary Landscapes, an online-only essay series of personal stories about the places of Midwestern literature, edited by Andy Oler. We are currently collaborating with KBIA and the Columbia Missourian to develop a podcast about the Missouri River.

Readers tell us they think differently about places they’ve lived their whole lives. You can subscribe here and see if that holds up.

The next step for The New Territory is to reach, foster, and nurture more readers, writers and editors who are searching for deep belonging in the Lower Midwest. For these purposes, The New Territory organized as a nonprofit in 2022, applied for a 501(c)(3) nonprofit designation in late 2022, and received the designation this year. We look forward to bringing more people together through events, whether that’s over a launch party, our new fall Pageturner fundraiser, or out in the community in other creative ways.

Whether you’re learning about The New Territory for the first time or have been with us from the beginning, please know we are so glad you’ve found us. Thank you for reading.