| Atavist Inc. | |
| Location City: | Brooklyn |
| Founder: | Jefferson RabbEvan RatliffNicholas Thompson. |
| Parent: | Automattic |
Atavist Inc. was originally founded in 2011, by Jefferson Rabb, Evan Ratliff, and Nicholas Thompson in Brooklyn, United States.[1]
Atavist Books, a multi-platform book publishing company, was launched in partnership with Barry Diller, Scott Rudin, and Frances Coady,[2] in the spring of 2014. Their idea was to publish multimedia stories combining text, video, and audio. Sleep Donation by Karen Russell was the venture's first novella.[3]
The company started to sell the CMS it had built to create its own stories for The Atavist Magazine[4] All titles were produced and distributed using the Atavist platform. The California Sunday Magazine, Mental Floss, The Daily Dot, The Christian Science Monitor and Esquire, among other magazines, used the Atavist platform to publish feature stories on the web.
After Atavist Books published its first title, five more e-titles were published. In October 2014, the initiative was shut down with a spokesperson for the company saying, "[they] have identified that the market for highly innovative enhanced full-length literary eBooks still heavily relies on a print component and has yet to emerge."[5]
In 2015, Atavist Inc. reportedly cut half of its staff due to lack of funding.
In June 2018, Atavist announced that it was being acquired by Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com.[6] In April 2021, the magazine moved to WordPress.com, joining the Newspack community of publishers.
The Atavist Magazine is a monthly publication of longform narrative journalism.[7] It has been nominated for eight National Magazine Awards since its launch in 2011,[8] and in 2015 it won Best Feature Writing, with its piece "Love and Ruin" by James Verini. It was the first digital-only publication to receive the award.[9] Its titles have also been honored by the Livingston Awards, the Bayeux-Calvados Normandy Awards for War Correspondents, and the Clarion Awards, among other prizes.[10]
In June 2021, it launched its first-ever narrative podcast, No Place Like Home, about the theft of the pair of ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz. The podcast was produced by Cadence 13.
Some of its stories have been optioned for film/TV projects.[11] [12] [13] The magazine is represented by Creative Artists Agency. The editor in chief is Seyward Darby.[14] The art director is Ed Johnson.[15]