From the In Box: What the Hell?
We were informed today of our mention on this Web site, and the attention we have received because of certain similarities to Eggers's journal and Web site, McSweeney's. We, Scott Korb and Ryan Purdy, are the editors of the AJoP, and we would love to clear up some things.

We aren't affiliated with the McSweeney's gang, although we are friends with some of them, either through coincidence or otherwise. Many of our contributors' works have appeared either in their journal or online, and we have met some of them through McSweeney's infamous events. As far as we can tell, that's where the connections end. (We may be wrong.)

As sometimes gets spoken about, there is here in New York quite a pool of writers, many of whom happen to operate in the same circles, and many of whom support each other's work. Without trying to sound too conspicuously humble, we are simply one of the several outgrowths of this "community," others including Pindeldyboz.com (and its print version) and the Americana reading series.

About a year ago we started talking about publishing a quarterly journal (We should also credit Amie Barrodale with being there at the beginning). Having the wherewithal to do so may have been prompted in part by Eggers making this not seem an impossible task. After figuring some things out, we chose to try and focus on things that appear infrequently in other publications, namely, people's private fascinations and other such esoteric nonfiction topics. Hence the AJoP: One has articles on pneumatic tubes in New York City, Scrabble tournaments, and the Giant Squid. We also realized that we knew a number of good fiction writers, and expanded the scope of the journal. It has proven successful and, more importantly, amazingly fun and interesting to collect and edit all of these pieces by such great authors, and publish them however we can.

As for our Web site's design, well. As with many similar endeavors, we were itching to take advantage of the visibility that a Web site would provide. Working with our Web designer and editor, Teresa Lopez-Castro, we made the site in a few days, actually a few hours, still unsure of what its role would be. Hence, our design is simple, and is, in fact, about to change to reflect our own design ideas. It's actually a little funny that this got noticed, as this is the week we're figuring out what to do next with the site. As for all of those things mentioned in our site's code, that's partially our own naivete: in an effort to make sure people could find us, or our writers and their articles, and being a little ignorant of how search engines work, we decided to include everything that may relate to the AJoP's first print edition.

Regarding our tone, well, we're not sure what to say about that. If what we've written seems ironic or otherwise, we're not sure that was our intention. After all, we all have our own tones, whatever the influences, and sometimes certain things bleed through more than others. We aren't aiming to be thought of as an ironic (post- or otherwise) humor journal; the Web site aims to complement these ideas we've set for our print version and ourselves.

Thanks, though, for finding us and caring enough to think about what we're doing. After starting out with a quiet task, it's great to see that others are noticing. The support and recognition is wonderful.

P.S. The Brooklyn location is a coincidence; in fact, one of us is moving to Queens next month, and the AJoP is moving to a P.O. Box. -- Ryan Purdy and Scott Korb