Apogee is a 501c3 literary organization and collective that encourages thoughtful exploration of identity at its intersections: race, gender, sexuality, class, caste, and disability status.
The word “apogee” denotes the point in an object’s orbit farthest from a center. In turn, we celebrate artistic expression far from the political center, created by artists and writers of oppressed identities, particularly incarcerated writers, who interrogate aesthetic and political status quos in their work. As we do so, we pay tribute to the Black feminist Combahee River Collective in recognition that “the major systems of oppression are interlocking.” To that end, we combat the domination of white, cis-heteronormative, patriarchal, settler-colonial voices that pervade our literary landscape.
We feature fiction, nonfiction, poetry, flash fiction, reviews, interviews, and visual art. We celebrate and hope to model practices of equity, linguistic diversity, abolition, and decoloniality. Our staff is composed of writers, teachers, students, activists, and organizers. We identify as Black, women of color, and LGBTQ. We seek to move beyond representation for its own sake. We understand that the personal and the political are inseparable. We denounce the ongoing genocidal exploits of Western and imperial regimes against indigenous peoples in Palestine, Sudan, Congo, and around the world. We aim to platform writing that is liberatory, defies conventions, and operates against the normative values enforced by the publishing industry.
Apogee affirms the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and freedom for Palestine.
In 2011, a group of writers of color and international students in Columbia’s graduate writing program created Apogee as a space to intervene in conversations about traditional publishing. Recognizing the ideological and ethical limitations of publishing under the umbrella of a large institution, Apogee began operating independently as a biannual print journal in 2013. It expanded its community of contributors and staff beyond Columbia, operating independently as a biannual print journal, concurrently building an active online hub, Perigee, which featured original content, editorials, interviews, and much more.
As Apogee grew, we decided to explore the capabilities of digital publishing, putting together online folios that responded to emergencies. We published collections that speak with Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson and beyond, call out abusive figures in the literary sphere, express solidarity with the #NoDAPL movement, and more.
Alongside our publishing work, we deepened connections to our local communities, especially in New York City. We curated readings and open mics, including annual celebrations of our issue launches and readings, and participated in the Governor’s Island Poetry Festival and Brooklyn Book Festival. We hosted low-cost writing workshops (Writing in the Margins, Writing Resistance) sponsored by the Brooklyn Arts Council. Our editors contributed to panels, interviews, and editorials about making publishing more accessible and equitable. To explore these conversations, see:
After exploring the potential of both site-specific and digital activities, we decided to focus on building an all-online publishing platform. In 2018, Apogee started its digital transition with the hope of building a broader artistic community beyond New York City.
While we started with a subscription model for accessing our biannual issues, we eventually eliminated the paywall, making our digital issues free for all to access.