Inside Esopus 24 were interactive artists’ projects by Hayden Dunham and Marco Maggi, which required readers’ partipication to become fully realized. I spoke with Ann Goldstein (perhaps best-known for her English translation of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels) about what it was like to go from learning Italian at an evening class for adults to becoming one of the world’s most acclaimed Italian-to-English translators. The issue presented 100 frames from the Sudanese documentary Beats of the Antonov, and went behind the scenes of the mid-1980s drag scene at NYC’s Pyramid Club with Clayton Patterson’s intimate portraits of performers including Lypsinka and John Sex. Esopus 24 also took readers on a virtual behind-the-scenes trip to NYC cultural institutions with installments of regular series Modern Artifacts (MoMA), Guarded Opinions (Brooklyn Museum), and the inaugural installment of Public Access in collaboration with the New York Public Library.

The issue closed with a CD of music created in the groundbreaking recording studio of Brooklyn’s Pioneer Works Center for Arts and Innovation. The compilation included tracks from an eclectic range of musicians including Senyawa, Otomo Yoshihide, Yonotan Gat, klein, Tara Jane O’Neil, and Jaiko and Benoit.