Publishing in New Contrast means presenting your work in distinguished company to an informed, erudite audience.  I'm thrilled that my work has appeared there, and even more to read the writers there who show me how it's done.  New Contrast is a conduit to that most precious thing, a writing community.  Join us. Gabeba Baderoon

In a time of the unequalled dumbing down of our intellectual life by officialdom and capital and misinformation - for understandable as well as expedient reasons ­ and for just trying to remain head above water in historically turbulent times - the survival of a magazine such as New Contrast is cardinal.

There are very few fora left in our country that examine the categories - often contingent and tangential - that societies get built on. This is what literature does. Why governments sometimes view it with hostility. And why, in hidden code, the humanities at our universities are being scaled down. 

It is no use having such forums when the building of nation and state has already been completed. By then things are fixed in stone. Now is the time to have them - in the incipient phase, and the very time these magazines are under unprecedented threat.

Let New Contrast live.
Charl-Pierre Naude

Contrast and its successor New Contrast have over the years been a major  influence in keeping South African writing a flourishing activity.  This is especially true of the poetry: financially the poorest member of the Arts family, imaginatively the the first to go on the invitation list for any gathering. All literary magazines need subscribers;  subsidy is no substitute for subscription - and only subscription ensures a regular supply.  If you read for pleasure, you should be subscribing to New Contrast.
Jonty Driver

New Contrast is on the cutting edge of South African literature. There is nowhere else for the poet in this country of higher standing as a forum for sharing in what poetry is doing. The journal must be kept in place, and enhanced if possible by better funding: without it, where could we send material, how could we access each other's work?
I can't emphasise the importance of New Contrast too eloquently: its track record speaks for itself. (We actually need 6 more journals of its standard to serve the needs of South African poetry.)
Norman Morrissey

New Contrast is becoming an increasingly valuable reflection of literary talent in this country. But don't subscribe because it's South African - subscribe because the writing and art it showcases is really good.
Ken Barris

The harsh monetarist culture in which we live represses many kinds of spirituality. Poetry is one of these and all of us who are smitten by the muse from time to time are blessed to have a journal like New Contrast which year after year thanks to the labour of the editors, opens its pages to the poets.
Chris Mann
Honorary Professor of Poetry
Rhodes University

I must say I thoroughly enjoyed my free issue 142. It was exceptional - there wasn't a single piece I didn't either like tremendously or had to grudgingly concede that despite my taste based reservations it nevertheless deserved to be published (almost none of the latter).  And I'm a harsh critic.  I have never read a journal that I have thought of as highly.

Terence Beney

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