About Town

Before there were magazines, there were broadsides: sheets of paper printed on one side with verse, essays, news articles, song lyrics, items of gossip, or pictures, and posted on public walls to be read by an audience of passersby. So neither our medium nor our method is particularly original.

Town is a literary magazine appearing in both print and pixels at irregular intervals — every six weeks or so — based in Port of Spain, Trinidad. We publish poems, very short prose, and artists’ images in broadside editions of a few dozen. These are simple 8½-by-11-inch sheets, produced using an ordinary desktop printer and a photocopier.

Every issue of Town contains four or five pieces or images, and each of these is printed on a separate sheet. Most of these are posted in and around Port of Spain on walls, fences, lampposts, notice-boards, and the like. A few get slipped under doors, into postboxes, or into books in bookshops.

The printed sheets include the address of the Town website. Here you will find the full contents of each issue, biographies of the writers and artists, and a link to a PDF version of each broadside. We encourage you to download these, print them out at home, and become an associate publisher of Town by posting your own printed sheet anywhere you like — at home, at your office or school, on your own wall, fence, or lamppost. Or slip it under someone’s door.

Town is a modest independent project supported by volunteers. Our minimal costs come out of the editors’ pockets. We are one of several creative initiatives associated with Alice Yard, and the broadsides are printed with the help of Sean Leonard.

What does the name mean?
Whatever you want it to.

Where can I find your printed broadsides?
At random and changing locations in and around Port of Spain, but especially in the vicinity of Alice Yard (80 Roberts Street, Woodbrook); our two favourite bookshops in the city, Paper Based (Hotel Normandie, St. Ann’s) and The Reader’s Bookshop (cor. Middle Street and Patna Street, St. James); and the National Library (cor. Hart Street and Abercromby Street, downtown).


Masthead

Editors: Nicholas Laughlin, Vahni Capildeo, Anu Lakhan
Contact: writetotown[at]gmail[dot]com