We're back

Did you miss us? Don’t worry, we won't be leaving you again in any hurry. From here on out, we’ll be ridin’ the new wave of Lateral to bigger and better things.

Illustration by Simona Seizova

Illustration by Simona Seizova

This is an editorial for Issue 25 of Lateral by editor-in-chief Tessa Evans, who can’t wait to inject a little more Lateral into your lives.

Welcome back.

It has been a busy few months for those of us working behind the scenes. Many of our hard-working, long-serving, steadfast editors have moved on to other projects, opening space for us to bring on a whole new cohort of keen, young, science communicators to fill out our ranks. I’m loving all the new insights and ideas this is bringing to our team.

We’ve also been working out what we want Lateral to be. When we launched back in 2015 under the helm of editor-in-chief Jack Scanlan, we were just happy that the magazine existed. Now we’re thinking more about where we’re going.

We want to remain grounded in our goals: to provide a haven and launching-pad for new science communicators, a place to learn the ropes of explaining complex scientific concepts through story. But above all, we want to be known as a magazine that produces great, original, thought-provoking science stories of a high-quality.

Looking to the future, we’ve been setting ourselves up as a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee, and will soon be registering as a charity in Australia. Alongside this, we’ve been writing grant proposals and putting together a crowdfunding campaign to shore up funding to keep Lateral afloat.

Please take a look, watch our video, share amongst your networks or, y'know, donate. We believe strongly in paying our excellent writers and artists for the work they produce — we can’t continue as we are without you. This cash injection will set us up for our next phase. 

Our next issue, to be published in April, will also be accompanied by the very first episode of our podcast, Collateral. We’ve thrown around the idea of a podcast for a while — notwithstanding the standalone audio articles produced by our extremely talented Life Science editor Andrew Katsis, like this one. Collateral, as the name suggests, will be an extra arm of the magazine, exploring our themes from another angle and giving you, dear readers, an insight into what goes into producing a magazine like Lateral.

Stand by for our Collateral teaser trailer, coming next week.

As for this issue? Make sure you don't get swept away by a tsunami of praise or drowned out by the effects of noise pollution. Our 25th issue is all about waves —and not just the kind brought on by angry storms. So what are you waiting for? Dive in.