Old Friends, New Media & Everything In-Between
Introducing Inkwell as the new form of Ekstasis
This Weekend Edition of Inkwell features Conor Sweetman
EKSTASIS, WHEN IT STARTED as an idea out of a dorm room, was an amalgamation of one person’s aesthetic tendencies and taste. It was a cocktail of the spiritual intensity and malaise of novels by Michael D. O’Brien, Mary Doria Russell & Douglas Coupland, university lectures on Romantic era & fin de siècle poetry, trippy alternative music that blended 808 beats with old Hollywood string quartets, and a faith that had been bruised, momentarily abandoned, and picked carefully back up.
I’m not saying that Ekstasis was a massive success that connected with millions of people, but we had a good little community that cared about each other’s artistry and pumped us up enough for other organizations to take notice and want to collaborate with some of the energy we were putting out.
My framework was limited and based mostly on personal interactions, but it felt like that when people got Ekstasis, they could intuitively sense that we were trying to do something different in a way that elevated design, probed deep emotions, and surveyed the cultural landscape in an incisive way—we were trying to aim at something new, halfway between a literary journal and design agency.
OVER THE LAST YEAR, I’ve seen a new spark light up inside the eyes of readers and friends as this new iteration of Inkwell has been solidified and new horizons have come into view. Personally, I’ve become a bit obsessed with understanding new forms of media, multiverses, and communities along the way. I admit that my reading habits have somewhat shifted from academic literary explorations toward investigations of the power of language, the poetic and relational undercurrents of contemporary media, and how we connect and communicate with each other in this uniquely compressed and complex age of human interaction.
Over the past 5 years, I’ve enjoyed an increasing amount of The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and of course, Christianity Today, to glimpse the power of story and the strangeness of human life created in the image of God. I’ve feasted on the biographies of magazine editors, artists, quantum mathematicians, and foreign diplomats like Richard Holbrooke and Pamela Churchill Harriman, who relied on the subtleties of relationships and language to shift major global realities for the sake of peace and prosperity.
I’ve listened to more hours than I could count of the Longform Podcast, partook in new digital news ecosystems formed by Semafor and Puck, and learned a lot about the interior dynamics at play in journalistic enterprise and new media ventures. And to top it all off, I’ve enjoyed a hefty dose of poetry, both inside the Ekstasis inbox and out.
WITH THIS NEW ERA of Inkwell, the team and I feel deeply called to create overarching networks of art, poetry, literature, and friendship. These things form new atmospheres of spiritual testimony, social dynamism, and economic possibility for artists and thinkers who care deeply about their relationship with Christ, and who want to find a way to make friends and money in the context of vocational creativity. I’m fundamentally interested in the subconscious engines of artistry that lead to atmosphere-shaping cultural production: the disciplined editor behind the lone-wolf writer; the freewheeling evenings of the Paris salon where Monet got his big gallery break, the gatherings in a New York apartment where Hannah Arendt sharpened her thinking and theories around war and evil.
We don’t want Inkwell aesthetics to become entrenched only in big city vibes, but to ignore the creative momentum, the patronage pull, and the serendipitous opportunities for new friendship that is sustained by the “density of the Imago Dei” would be to miss out on helping to fill a gap for Christians today. I think Inkwell needs to be a place where the bustle of the city is in conversation with the quiet fringes. The outer space allows the silence to know how to think, and the inner energy allows the ideas to actually make things happen.
We want to help those deeply devoted to the Church avoid the binary of certain industries and creative expressions that either see themselves as simply faith-based or else as cultural elite. The ground beneath media, society, politics, and spirituality are undergoing a tectonic shift—and we need to prepare ourselves accordingly. Inkwell seeks to foster a holy ambition and embodied local community that is connected to a wide, intense, and global conversation about how we create beautiful culture in the light of the Kingdom. To that end, I want to lay out some of our new offerings. We are entering a 4 year sprint where we hope to bring a lot of this to life in a new way and at a new scale, and I personally would love for you to be involved.
Our Desire & Purpose
Incubate Storytellers:
Build thriving creative networks around a faithful poetic core
Accelerate Stories:
Tell the story of tomorrow with the ink of the past
Our Framework
Click on a link if you’re interested in being involved
Identify
→ Inkwell Online
→ Inkwell Opportunity Network
Inspire
→ Inkwell Evenings
→ Storytelling Dinners
Equip
→ Inkwell Locals & Curriculum
→ Young Storytellers Fellowship
→ Inkwell Workshops
Elevate
→ Annual State of the Culture Print Edition
→ Inkwell Substack Subscriber Community & Newsletters
Grow
→ Inkwell Reserve Evenings
→ Inkwell Creative Council
→ Christianity Today Story Fund
Conor Sweetman
Editor
Conor is the founding editor of Ekstasis and the Director of Innovation & Collaboration at Christianity Today.
What did you think of this post? Share your thoughts with a comment!
P.S. Check out our latest batch of published poetry—especially look out for “The Dakotas” by , “Where Two or More are Gathered” by , “To the Novelist” by , “Carrier” by , and “To Host a Party” by .
It's certainly an exciting time, Conor. Agree with everything you are thinking through and aiming towards here. Hope to be part of Inkwell's journey in whatever small way I can.
I also think there is a need for quality short fiction in the vein of Lewis' paraphrased quote from 'God In The Dock': "The world does not need more Christian literature. What it needs is more Christians writing good literature."
We will not have great novels (or the great films / TV series they so often lead to) without a robust publishing of quality short fiction.
Eager for all of this Conor. I appreciate how you articulate what I’ve often thought is an unnecessary tension between secular and sacred which is usually based on fear or judgement of one or the other. To me, it’s always been about cultural immersion and a love of the city and paying attention to nudges of the spirit to discern along the way.