Exploring Desire, June 2026

As a kid growing up in suburban Los Angeles, newsstands were sacred sites. The nearest one was a 20-minute drive away, so my ability to find new magazines was limited to someone driving me to one, often my mother and in connection with errands around the city. I had yearnings, dreams of art and other ways of encountering the world, and I’d notice that they often found resonance in the saddle- and perfect-bound pages I spent hours browsing. This was the 1990s and the internet hadn’t yet opened up the way we imbibe information. Magazines were the most potent proof that whatever life I hoped to live, whatever world I hoped to be part of creating, already existed or was being born.

It was at the newsstand at a Barnes & Noble, now America’s largest bookstore chain, that I found CMJ, a monthly indie music magazine that came with a CD of new music from unsigned bands. This is how I found out about Riot Grrrl, the Ramones and Pavement. When I was old enough to drive, I got my hands on the LA Weekly, a free magazine you’d find in coffee shops and newspaper dispensers next to the LA Times. The Weekly helped me find my contours in the sprawl of Los Angeles. Alongside expansive gig listings, it was full of nightclub listings and ads for dominatrices. The photos of the women in those ads and the graphics for club nights I’d later frequent, with names such as Perversion or Bar Sinister, are part of what led me here, to the Erotic Review. Something would spark in the pages of a magazine and shift my trajectory. I kept an archive of specific issues of magazines that shaped me: Mirabella, Mad, Vanity Fair, Sassy, Skin Two…

You can imagine what it felt like when Lucy reached out in 2023 to chat about the new venture she was relaunching, the Erotic Review. And as of issue 5, several of the newsstands I used to visit as a teen now stock the magazine, such as Book Soup on the Sunset Strip and Vroman’s in Pasadena. Not only that, but readers can now find Erotic Review at the newsstands at Barnes & Noble in 58 locations across the US, from Burlington to Brooklyn, Salt Lake City to San Jose, CA. You can find the full list on our Instagram and in our last Exploring Desire newsletter.

For a time, it felt like the internet might usurp the magazine as a space of discovery and nexus of community, but as the possibility of open, meaningful discourse online has become increasingly fraught (as Lucy discusses her essay ‘Sex Not Seggs’), printed magazines have never felt more important. A magazine is a portal to another world. Pick ours up, and let its pages transport you.

— Saskia Vogel

Buy issue 5

You’ve got just under a week to enter our competition and have the chance to win one of three annual subscriptions. Just take a photo of the spring/summer issue in your local US stockist, post it on Instagram and tag @eroticreview. Find the terms and conditions for the draw on our Instagram.

Find us at the first ever magCulture fair on Saturday 4 July in London, alongside 39 other independent magazines and publishers. Come and say hello, get a copy of the spring/summer issue and collect back issues at a huge discount. The fair runs from 12–5pm and is located at 46 Essex Rd, N1 8LN.

We’re excited to announce that we’re curating an event with Sadie Coles HQ. Join us at their Savile Row gallery on 8 July for an evening exploring ‘The Erotics of Resistance’. We’ll have readings from Taíno Mendez, Rebecca Birrell and Sam Ashby, followed by a conversation led by editor Lucy Roeber. The event is free and no RSVP required—we hope to see you there!

Buying an annual subscription to the Erotic Review (published every October and April) makes all the difference to us as a small, independent publisher. Not only do you save money and get the work before it’s in the shops, but it allows us to budget over the year and to continue supporting the work of writers and artists. Help us to continue creating this uncensored space to explore our erotic lives.

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