Openings at Antiserious

Keeping in mind the changes we are bringing to the magazine, we have decided to expand our team.

Keeping in mind the changes we are bringing to the magazine, we have decided to expand our team. We understand that adding more members with diverse opinion, perspective and taste would only help us towards enhancing the magazine’s quality. This is just one more step towards where we want to see Antiserious in the future.

Do keep in mind that these aren’t paid positions. As you know, Antiserious is a labour of love. None of the founders make money out of it. And, as of now, we aren’t able to pay our writers. So the people who join us are expected to do so because they believe in the product that the magazine is and see it as a journey where we will fall, discover and learn together. They should believe in the possibilities that an alternative space like ours has.

Why join us?

Apart from the above mentioned reasons, Antiserious in its very short existence — founded in late 2014 — has been able to publish writers as diverse as the celebrated novelist and literary critic Amit Chaudhuri, acclaimed writer Amitava Kumar, and novelists Aruni Kashyap, Nilanjana Roy, Amandeep Sandhu, Tanuj Solanki and Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, renowned and widely published poets that includes stalwarts like Adil Jussawalla and stretches to Karthika Nair, Mihir Vatsa, Akhil Katyal, Manash Bhattacharjee and Prerna Bakshi. This list also includes notable names from other fields of work like National Award winning actress Kalki Koechlin and Cannes Film Festival showcased director Vasan Bala.

Now with our move towards a quarterly magazine format, we are committed to up the game — both in terms of quality and reach. Being involved with our magazine, means you are exposed to various ideas in terms of writing and editing. Working together, closely, with an enthusiastic team of founders, the incoming members get to be a part of a venture that aims to leave an indelible mark on the cultural history of India.

What we want from you

As these are unpaid positions, passion for storytelling is what keeps us going. We value the trivial over what is “important!” and BREAKING. We accommodate falls and fragments. We want people who will be as passionate about this project as we are. Who, while acquainted with the magazine’s style, also show us ways go beyond the horizons our minds can conceive.

Since we aren’t paying you, we do not expect you to behave like a full-time employee of the organization. In fact, all the founding members of the organization hunt for food elsewhere. But we do expect at least 10 hours of dedication per week, in which you read the submissions, write blogs when necessary (this is for the Blog Editor), commission pieces, help us promote the magazine’s work on social media. Of course, the responsibilities will be divided between members.

Who we are looking for

Assistant editors

We are currently looking for assistant editors who will be working on our quarterly issues which will be scheduled for July, October, January, April every year. Our reading period is August 1 to January 31. We will not read beyond that, so that you get the time to put cucumber slices on your eyes. (WE DON’T DO THAT.) Beyond that you help us commission works from writers, beg illustrators to draw for the stories accordingly and then help promote what we publish. It might sound like a lot of work, but trust us, it isn’t when divided between five of us. We have been doing this and we are doing fine. And, you also get the opportunity to write interesting feature stories for us, perhaps even conduct interviews — though these won’t be forced on you.

How to apply: Send your a cover letter with your CV to work@antiserious.com. In the cover letter specify why you want to join us. Basically, flatter us by telling us what you like so much about the magazine, how you think you can be useful to it and how do you think the magazine can improve. Send us a writing sample which can be a set of poems — not less than three — or a fiction story, or an essay.

Important note: This is a permanent position and includes a probationary period of three months for the selected editors. This is the time we will need to be able to trust each other and each other’s working style.

Blog editors

We are looking for blog editors for the archival project that we wish to undertake — you can find more details about that here.

If you click on the blog section on our menu bar, you will get a glimpse of what we are attempting. But this is just a glimpse. We plan to reach out to literature of more languages, find more interviews, trivia, documented videos and letters. Till now we have been tied up by our limitations of language and time. After your joining us, we want to create a network of bloggers who will be willing contributors to this project. Your job here will be that of a curator and a writer.

We do not expect you write more than one blog piece a week. If you can’t do that, then we are okay with even two pieces a month. We want you focus in managing the blog section, collecting and cross-checking blog posts for grammatical errors and errors in translation — when it involves a language other than English that you understand.

How to apply: Send your a cover letter with your CV to work@antiserious.com. In the cover letter specify why you want to join us. Basically, flatter us by telling us what you like so much about the magazine, how you think you can be useful to it and how do you think the magazine can improve. Also, send us a short blog post which we will consider as your writing sample.

Important note: This is a permanent position and includes a probationary period of three months for the selected editors. This is the time we will need to be able to trust each other and each other’s working style.

Bloggers

This position will always be open. As mentioned in detail above, your posts are not restricted by culture, politics or language. It can be about an old interview of Jayalalitha that your chanced upon in a now-defunct magazine, a letter you found written by O.V. Vijayan, an essay by Kishan Chander, or a reading by Namdeo Dhassal. Just spin it around like we do in this section:

Antiserious
Journal of Laughter in Slow Motionantiserious.com

The only restriction is that you must write it in a way that makes it accessible for a reader who does not understand the language/ script of the original text. In short, the message you are trying to deliver must be translated to English. If, for example, you pick small chunks from an essay to drive home the idea of your piece, translate at least those parts. In case, there is a sufficiently well done translation already available on the internet, we would advise you to use that and save your time.

An example of the latter would be this recent post on Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s recitation of his poem “Hum Dekhenge”.

Faiz Ahmad Faiz Recites his Poem “Hum Dekhenge”
The famous Faiz poem in his own voiceantiserious.com

Through these blogs we are trying create a culture of archiving. This is a community, a collective. We aren’t expecting our bloggers to write for us very frequently. Write because you enjoy and believe in this project, because you feel your region’s culture deserves the visibility we are trying to bring to the regional languages we can currently deal with — Hindi, Bengali and Marathi. You can write for us whenever you feel like, after discussing the idea with either Manjiri Indurkar or Debojit Dutta or the incoming blog editor/s. We will be very happy if you can write for us at least once a month.

How to apply: Send us a short blog post which we will consider your writing sample. Mail it to work@antiserious.com. Please also mention in the body of the email the languages, apart from English, which you understand well enough to be able to write for this section.