Grain exists because most of what's worth writing about doesn't happen on a news cycle. It happens over a season, a decade, sometimes a whole working life — and it deserves paper that lasts as long as the story does.
Nora spent nine years as a newspaper reporter before starting Grain — long enough to get tired of stories that were finished before the ink was even dry on the last edit. Grain is her answer: four issues a year, and every one of them takes as long as it needs to.
She still edits every feature herself, and still believes a story about a knife-maker or a church-organ repair deserves the same care as one about anything else.
Every feature gets at least two visits — one to look, one to actually talk. Writers spend days in a shop, a kitchen, a boatyard, not an afternoon. It's slower. It reads that way, too.
Every issue is designed for print before it's ever adapted for a screen. Stock, weight, and binding are chosen the same way a photograph is chosen — for what it does to the story.
Setting type for Issue Fourteen, letter by letter