EWLP alum Grace Stathatos graduated from AUR in May 2024 and promptly began devising her first literary endeavor upon moving back to New York. Grace was inspired to create ‘GritMag,’ a personal online platform, to showcase her particular fascination with the human condition in New York City. She expressed that her time as a waitress deepened her interest in people and in the stories she frequently found herself immersed in on the job. Grace stated that, “I feel lucky that so many people around me trust me with their stories. I was really inspired by the fact that everything I know and experience is much bigger than I am, and it felt right to do that fact justice and create something bigger than just myself.” For this reason, ‘GritMag’ is indicative of Grace’s appreciation for the immensity of storytelling and how it is an integral part of the grand narrative of the collective human condition.
The intention behind ‘GritMag’ is to showcase the “human condition in the Unreal City of Modernity.” The plurality and ambivalence of the human experience is the guiding theme in Grace’s vision of ‘GritMag,’ so her appreciation for ‘humanness’ as opposed to ‘humanity’ is what she hopes translates to her readership. In light of this, she expressed that, “I’d love for people to look at my articles and immediately see the dynamic and diverse state of other people.” Specifically, she aims to “explain the intersections of health/illness, art, struggle, and fleshy grit of the people in cities.”
With regard to the aesthetic of ‘GritMag,’ Grace was inspired by ‘Vice Magazine’ for its edginess and treatment of modernity. She also is extremely grateful to BYLD studio, based in Rome, for curating the bold website that aesthetically matches the content. The social media presence for the platform was influenced by a local music magazine called ‘Cherry Tape Mag’ which Grace had been following for a few years.
So far, Grace has authored two articles that are published on the ‘GritMag’ website. The first investigates artists who copy Basquiat’s style, and Grace received a response from the main person she focused on in the article. Although Grace was far from complimentary of his work, he took her criticism well, and they had a fulfilling interaction as a result of the article that explored how art has evolved in the modern world. The second article transports readers to Belgium and the Netherlands where Grace traveled to search for Christiane Felscherinow’s memoir depicting her phase as a 13 year old heroin addict. This piece showcases Grace’s voice and her passion for the gritty underbelly of the human experience. She is currently working on a piece dealing with HIV/AIDS in hip hop culture.
For anyone interested in establishing an online presence as a writer, Grace suggests that you sit with what you know best and examine what you think about the most. She emphasized the importance of this awareness but also the need to distance yourself from your writing so that others can connect to it. Ultimately, “take what is special about you and the way you think and apply it to the world.”
Grace’s ‘GritMag’ is a raw and honest creative outlet that showcases what intrigues her about the city she has grown up in and ideas that inspired her while studying at AUR. Moving forward, she affirms that, “what is most important to me is that these topics become interesting to others as well, and that maybe readers are inspired to look a little more deeply into the stories people around them have. There is a lot of suffering and a lot of beauty, and those two things can be found anywhere.”
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