Gritty, Engaging Design

For Meghan Murphy, entertainment isn’t a dirty word. She’s a young woman committed to literature and the arts, but she refuses to get stuck with the highbrow, Master of Fine Arts crowd.

She co-founded Paper Darts, a Minneapolis-based literature magazine, in 2009 and with it struck a perfect balance. The magazine is gritty, engaging, impeccably designed and it cuts a door into the sometimes stuffy world of art and literature, inviting everyone inside.

“It’s not that there weren’t enough literary magazines – god knows the world has enough literary magazines – but there weren’t really readable literary magazines,” Murphy said. “We felt if we brought design and humor to the literary magazine in a fresh way we’d be able to find more readers, and maybe actual readers.”

Murphy grew up in Sturgeon Bay, doodling in class and reading her parents’ books underneath the covers after bedtime. She started Paper Darts with Jamie Millard after graduating from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities where she studied art, English and art history.

There, she learned about the history of literature and the role small publications had in starting the careers of many famous writers.

“Smaller presses used to be very important to the way literature was published and the way different writers were finding an audience,” Murphy said.

Murphy and Millard decided to bring the small press back. They met in coffee shops, taught themselves to build a website, and sewed the first issue of the magazine together with a sewing machine.

Now, just four years later, the Paper Darts website publishes content daily, four printed magazines have sailed off the stands, and Paper Darts Press published the book Get In If You Want To Live by John Jodzio.

The magazine is small but mighty, much like Murphy herself. She’s articulate and expertly dressed, and it would be a mistake to admire the cover but overlook the depth.

“Really I have no business doing what I’m doing, but we work really hard,” Murphy said. “We work really hard to run it as professionally as possible despite our age and our lack of experience, and it’s nice to see that some writers respond to that and trust us.”

Professional doesn’t mean traditional, and not everything Paper Darts does is with pictures and words. The magazine hosts an event with every issue release to bring art and literature to life. For volume five, Paper Darts is using an art gallery to build a living magazine where writers and artists can work or show off finished products, and readers can see what goes into the magazine.

Door County native Megan Murphy currently resides in Minneapolis, where she publishes the art and literature magazine, ‘Paper Darts.’

“I just like the idea of this being a box filled with things that you’d find in our magazine, but it’s in real life,” Murphy said.

Past Paper Darts events have been packed with artists, writers and appreciators. Although the Twin Cities’ art community has been good to her, Murphy continues to use the connections she has with Door County artists.

“I’m always amazed at Door County, how many great people are living here and working here, and grew up here and are driven to be in the arts,” Murphy said.

Paper Darts has published work by former Door County residents Nichole Graf, Carleyrae Weber and Stephanie Voegele and a feature on the Sturgeon Bay musician Anna Sacks. They’re all young, female artists like Murphy who work hard to make a living in unconventional fields.

Even while her career and magazine mature, Murphy knows she’ll be able to keep them relevant and edgy.

“I have confidence in my ability to understand literature trends and art trends, and I’m really energized by it, I’m really excited by it,” Murphy said. “I don’t think I could ever be stagnant or fall into a routine because I’m just so excited by anything that surprises me or anything that feels fresh and new, and I think [Paper Darts] will just naturally gravitate in those directions.”

Murphy, Millard and the rest of the Paper Darts staff have made sure the magazine grows in a smart way. They’re a for-profit publication, a business in a grant-funded world, and sell the printed version for about $20 a copy. They don’t take advertisers yet because they want to have a solid product that can attract the right companies to advertise.

Making a profit with a print product is challenging, but the task is worth the effort.

“The nature of being in a world where there is no money keeps you scrappy in all the best ways,” Murphy said. “You constantly have to prove to yourself that it’s worth it and prove to the world that you’re worth it. I think it really does force relevance. You have to keep going and keep making it worth it.”

So far, she said, it definitely is.

Learn more about Paper Darts at paperdarts.org.