You could count on one hand the number of magazines geared toward atheists/skeptics that don’t come attached to a membership with a national organization. The team at The Celestial Teapot (an homage to Bertrand Russell‘s famous analogy) is trying to fill that void with their new digital publication:

We are a new magazine publication for the atheist community. We write about American History and politics, religion, science, the environment, sex, atheism, humanism and secularism. We strongly believe in the separation of church & state, rational thought and logical reasoning. but we also enjoy the lighter topics: art, comics, memes, and photography.

I spoke with editor-in-chief Irene Panchuk via email about the magazine and what it offers readers:

Is there really a market for this? We’ve had a great response so far from the atheist/secular demographic because we are offering something new and unique. In the future we plan on moving into a broader transmedia strategy with video production, news, interactive content and more. These are all in the works now. How have sales been going so far? We just launched our first paid issue in July and, thanks in part to our friends at the Richard Dawkins Foundation & SecularWoman.org, we have been getting quite a few subscribers and sales in just the past two weeks.

What do your contributors bring to the table in terms of writing experience and editing? Our hard-working editor Eddie Mumford is now a published author — he’s just released a book with Tekseditions and is starting a second one; Corinne Zimmerman is a board member of Secular Woman and is a professor of psychology at Illinois State University; Rachel Johnson is from The Pink Atheist podcast and a biologist-in-training, There’s also Steven Olsen, author of Unbelievable History and ex-president of Springfield Thinkers, and several up-and-coming bloggers. We even had Michael Shermer guest-star in Issue #2. I myself have a BA in English; art, philosophy and literature are a huge part of my life. Jeff Ridout — the magazine’s founder — has been involved in the evolution of the National Atheist Party & Support Atheism. What does your magazine offer that people might really be drawn into? We offer some of the more interesting (in my opinion) articles about science and biology, new discoveries and fascinating theories, politics, history, current events, things that feed the mind. We also offer topics that entertain or touch on a more emotional note: art, parenting, sex, editorials, comics, hilarious horoscopes. I try to make the magazine visually appealing as well — it’s kind of like a high end art magazine melded with a science and tech publication. What do you hope to accomplish with this magazine? We hope to fill a need that atheists, humanists, secularists and scientifically/logically-minded people have for a general interest publication that speaks to their beliefs and values. Atheists have such a rich history of literature — Mark Twain, Christopher Hitchens, Isaac Asimov, George Carlin, to name a few — I’d like to draw on that unique culture, keep it alive and perhaps try to contribute to it.

The magazine is available for $5 per individual issue or $10 for a full-year (four issue) subscription.

(Disclosure: A contributor to this site, Bridget Gaudette, also does PR for The Celestial Teapot. She played no part in the writing of this post.)



