3:AM Magazine is a literary magazine, which was set up as 3ammagazine.com in April 2000 and is edited from Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

. Its editor-in-chief since inception has been Andrew Gallix, a lecturer at the Sorbonne

Sorbonne

The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris...

 .

Its outlook is post-punk

Post-punk

Post-punk is a rock music movement with its roots in the late 1970s, following on the heels of the initial punk rock explosion of the mid-1970s. The genre retains its roots in the punk movement but is more introverted, complex and experimental...

. It features transgressive fiction, interviews, critical writing and opinion columnists. Its slogan is "Whatever it is, we're against it."

History

The magazine was launched in 2000. In 2004, the editors unsuccessfully tried to prevent the Daily Mirror newspaper from publishing a short-lived 3am Magazine supplement based around its 3am Girls

The 3AM Girls

The 3AM Girls was the collective title of the gossip columnists for the British tabloid newspaper the Daily Mirror. The column is now called 3am and is edited by Clemmie Moodie....

 gossip column . The site was also called "suitably roguish for a website that aims to be an online Fitzrovia" by the Daily Telegraph, while The Independent

The Independent

The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...

has hailed its commitment to 'the avant-garde' on several occasions. The Spanish daily ABC hailed it as "the Offbeats

Offbeat generation

The Offbeat generation was a loose association of like-minded writers working across different styles but united by their opposition to a mainstream publishing industry driven by marketing departments...

’ New Yorker

The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

".

An anthology covering its first five years of publishing, The Edgier Waters, was published in Britain by Snowbooks in June 2006, featuring writers Steve Almond

Steve Almond

Steve Almond is an American short story writer and essayist. He is the author of eight books.-Life:He was raised in Palo Alto, California, and graduated from Henry M. Gunn High School. He received his undergraduate degree from Wesleyan University. He spent seven years as a newspaper reporter,...

, Bruce Benderson

Bruce Benderson

Bruce Benderson is an American author, to Jewish parents of Russian descent, who lives in New York. He attended William Nottingham High School in Syracuse, New York and then Binghamton University...

, Michael Bracewell

Michael Bracewell

Michael Bracewell is a British writer and novelist. He was born in London, and educated at the University of Nottingham.-Bibliography:*Fiction**Missing Margate **The Crypto-Amnesia Club...

, Tom Bradley

Tom Bradley (author)

Tom Bradley is an American novelist, essayist and writer of short stories. He is the author of The Sam Edwine Pentateuch, a five-book series, various volumes of which have been nominated for the Editor's Book Award, the New York University Bobst Prize, and the AWP Award Series in the Novel...

, Billy Childish

Billy Childish

Billy Childish is an English artist, painter, author, poet, photographer, film maker, singer and guitarist...

, Steven Hall

Steven Hall

Steven Hall is a British author. He has written one novel, produced a number of plays, music videos, concrete prose/conceptual art pieces, and short stories....

, Ben Myers

Ben Myers

Ben Myers is an English writer.His first novel The Book Of Fuck, a fictionalised account about a hapless music journalist, was published to underground acclaim in 2004 through Wrecking Ball Press. Myers claimed it was written in six days "as a joke"...

, Tim Parks

Tim Parks

Tim Parks is a British novelist, translator and author.-Life:Tim Parks was born in Manchester in 1954, the son of a clergyman. He grew up in Finchley , London and was educated at Cambridge University and Harvard. He has lived near Verona in Italy since 1981...

, Mark Simpson

Mark Simpson (journalist)

Mark Simpson is an English journalist, writer, and broadcaster specialising in pop culture, media, and masculinity. He has been described by one critic as "the skinhead Oscar Wilde" Simpson is a frequent commentator on British television shows....

, HP Tinker

HP Tinker

HP Tinker is a Manchester-based short story writer whose avant garde fiction has frequently been compared to Borges and Donald Barthelme...

 and Kenji Siratori, as well as poetry pieces arranged by Sonic Youth

Sonic Youth

Sonic Youth is an American alternative rock band from New York City, formed in 1981. The current lineup consists of Thurston Moore , Kim Gordon , Lee Ranaldo , Steve Shelley , and Mark Ibold .In their early career, Sonic Youth was associated with the No Wave art and music scene in New York City...

's Thurston Moore

Thurston Moore

Thurston Joseph Moore is an American musician best known as a singer, songwriter and guitarist of Sonic Youth. He has also participated in many solo and group collaborations outside of Sonic Youth, as well as running the Ecstatic Peace! record label...

 and Lee Ranaldo

Lee Ranaldo

Lee M. Ranaldo is an American singer, guitarist, writer, record producer, and visual artist, best known as a co-founder of the alternative rock band Sonic Youth...

 alongside Tyondai Braxton

Tyondai Braxton

Tyondai Braxton is an American composer and performer, largely known as the former guitarist/singer of Battles, and as a prominently featured artist on record label Warp Records...

.

A volume of new city-themed fiction, 3:AM London, Paris, New York followed in February 2008 (on Social Disease) and featured Henry Baum, Chris Cleave

Chris Cleave

-Biography:Cleave was born in London in 1973, brought up in Cameroon and Buckinghamshire, and educated at Balliol College, Oxford where he studied Psychology. He lives in the United Kingdom with his wife and three children.-Writing:...

, Niven Govinden

Niven Govinden

Niven Govinden is an English novelist. He was born in East Sussex and then educated at Goldsmiths College where he studied film. We Are The New Romantics was published by Bloomsbury in 2004. Graffiti My Soul is published by Canongate Books in January 2007.-External links:**...

, Laura Hird

Laura Hird

Laura Hird is a Scottish novelist and short story writer.Hird studied Contemporary Writing at Middlesex Polytechnic and is the author of two novels, Nail and Other Stories and Born Free . Hope and Other Urban Tales, a novella and short story collection, followed in 2006. All her novels and...

, Toby Litt

Toby Litt

Toby Litt is an English writer, born in Bedford in 1968. He studied at Bedford Modern School, read English at Worcester College, Oxford and studied Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia where he was taught by Malcolm Bradbury....

, Ed Park, Nicholas Royle

Nicholas Royle

Nicholas Royle is an English novelist.Born in Manchester, Royle has written five novels - Counterparts, Saxophone Dreams, The Matter of the Heart, The Director’s Cut and Antwerp. He also claims to have written more than 100 short stories, which have appeared in a variety of anthologies and...

, Matt Thorne

Matt Thorne

Matt Thorne is an English writer born in 1974 who has published seven novels. Thorne grew up in Bristol, England, and was educated at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge University. Thorne's first book, Tourist, was published in 1998. The book is an attack on the negative effects of tourism on...

 and Evie Wyld

Evie Wyld

Evie Wyld is the author of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize winning novel After the Fire, A Still Small Voice. In 2010 she was listed by The Daily Telegraph as one of the twenty best British authors under the age of 40....

.

Contents

3:AM sees itself as an extension of publishing traditions forged by earlier literary magazines before the advent of webzines. The magazine features literary criticism written by authors and also includes interviews with figures from all spheres of cultural activity, particularly cult

Cult Fiction

-Personel:* Matt Beck - guitar* Chris Raines - drums* Jon Spencer - vocals* Dan Tulloh - guitar...

 and transgressive

Transgressional fiction

Transgressive fiction is a genre of literature that focuses on characters who feel confined by the norms and expectations of society and who break free of those confines in unusual and/or illicit ways. Because they are rebelling against the basic norms of society, protagonists of transgressional...

 fiction. Its outlook and coverage is post-punk

Post-punk

Post-punk is a rock music movement with its roots in the late 1970s, following on the heels of the initial punk rock explosion of the mid-1970s. The genre retains its roots in the punk movement but is more introverted, complex and experimental...

, particularly the emphasis on 'blank generation' authors and elements of 'Prada Meinhof' (for instance Stuart Christie

Stuart Christie

Stuart Christie is a Scottish anarchist writer and publisher. Christie is best known for being arrested as an 18-year old while carrying explosives to assassinate the Spanish dictator General Franco. He was later alleged to be a member of the Angry Brigade, but was acquitted of related charges...

 and John Barker). Stuckism

Stuckism

Stuckism is an international art movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting in opposition to conceptual art...

 features prominently, from the poetry of Billy Childish

Billy Childish

Billy Childish is an English artist, painter, author, poet, photographer, film maker, singer and guitarist...

 and fellow Buff Medway Wolf Howard

Wolf Howard

Wolf Howard is an English artist, poet and filmmaker living in Chatham, Kent and was a founder member of the Stuckists art group...

, to the regular column by Charles Thomson

Charles Thomson (artist)

Charles Thomson is an English artist, painter, poet and photographer. In the early 1980s he was a member of The Medway Poets. In 1999 he named and co-founded the Stuckists art movement with Billy Childish. He has curated Stuckist shows, organised demonstrations against the Turner Prize, run an art...

, though equally it has also carried pieces supportive of Britart, in particular on Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst

Damien Steven Hirst is an English artist, entrepreneur and art collector. He is the most prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists , who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s. He is internationally renowned, and is reportedly Britain's richest living artist,...

 and with Matthew Collings

Matthew Collings

-Life and career:In one of his books on art, Collings states that, in his early teenage years, he ran away to Canada. This act was preceded by a period of hanging around in a house in Oakley Street, Chelsea, whose residents included members of various rock bands including Mighty Baby and Family...

. There is also a strong musical presence on the site, from an extensive archive by and about punk rockers, through to pieces by and about Spacemen 3

Spacemen 3

Spacemen 3 were an English alternative rock band, formed in 1982 in Rugby, Warwickshire by Peter Kember and Jason Pierce. Their music was "colorfully mind-altering, but not in the sense of the acid rock of the '60s; instead, the band developed its own minimalistic psychedelia"...

 and other shoegazer acts.

It claims its litblog

Litblog

A litblog is a blog that focuses primarily on the topic of literature. There is a community of litblogs in the blogosphere whose authors cover a variety of literary topics. Litbloggers may write about fiction, nonfiction, poetry, the publishing industry, literary journals, literary criticism, and...

 'Buzzwords' to be the world's first (since 2000).

Authors interviewed more than once include Steve Almond

Steve Almond

Steve Almond is an American short story writer and essayist. He is the author of eight books.-Life:He was raised in Palo Alto, California, and graduated from Henry M. Gunn High School. He received his undergraduate degree from Wesleyan University. He spent seven years as a newspaper reporter,...

, Will Ashon

Will Ashon

Will Ashon is an English novelist, former music journalist and founder of the Big Dada imprint of Ninja Tune records. Ashon was educated at Countesthorpe Community College and Balliol College, Oxford...

, Stephen Barber

Stephen Barber (writer)

Stephen Barber is a Professor at Kingston University's and a writer on urban culture, experiment in film and Japanese culture. Barber has been a Professor at Kingston University since 2002, and is currently a Research Professor in the Visual and Material Culture Research Centre, Faculty of Art,...

, Billy Childish

Billy Childish

Billy Childish is an English artist, painter, author, poet, photographer, film maker, singer and guitarist...

, Andrei Codrescu

Andrei Codrescu

Andrei Codrescu is a Romanian-born American poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and commentator for National Public Radio. He was Mac Curdy Distinguished Professor of English at Louisiana State University from 1984 until his retirement in 2009....

, Dennis Cooper

Dennis Cooper

Dennis Cooper is an American novelist, poet, critic, editor and performance artist.-Career:Cooper grew up the son of a wealthy businessman in Arcadia, California. His first forays into literature came early, focusing on imitations of Rimbaud, Verlaine, de Sade, and Baudelaire...

, Richard Hell

Richard Hell

Richard Hell is a singer, songwriter, bass guitarist, and writer.Richard Hell was an innovator of punk music and fashion. He was one of the first to spike his hair and wear torn, cut and drawn-on shirts, often held together with safety pins...

, Stewart Home

Stewart Home

Stewart Home is an English artist, filmmaker, writer, pamphleteer, art historian, and activist. He is best known for his novels such as the non-narrative 69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess , his re-imagining of the 1960s in Tainted Love , and earlier parodistic pulp fictions Pure Mania, Red...

, Tom Bradley

Tom Bradley (author)

Tom Bradley is an American novelist, essayist and writer of short stories. He is the author of The Sam Edwine Pentateuch, a five-book series, various volumes of which have been nominated for the Editor's Book Award, the New York University Bobst Prize, and the AWP Award Series in the Novel...

, Wu Ming

Wu Ming

Wu Ming is a pseudonym for a group of Italian authors formed in 2000 from a subset of the Luther Blissett community in Bologna.In their pre-Wu Ming days, the group wrote the novel Q ....

, Michael Moorcock

Michael Moorcock

Michael John Moorcock is an English writer, primarily of science fiction and fantasy, who has also published a number of literary novels....

, Dan Rhodes, Nicholas Royle

Nicholas Royle

Nicholas Royle is an English novelist.Born in Manchester, Royle has written five novels - Counterparts, Saxophone Dreams, The Matter of the Heart, The Director’s Cut and Antwerp. He also claims to have written more than 100 short stories, which have appeared in a variety of anthologies and...

, Iain Sinclair

Iain Sinclair

Iain Sinclair FRSL is a British writer and filmmaker. Much of his work is rooted in London, most recently within the influences of psychogeography.-Life and work:...

, Scarlett Thomas

Scarlett Thomas

Scarlett Thomas, born 1972 in Hammersmith, is an English author. She has written eight novels, including The End of Mr. Y and PopCo, and teaches Creative Writing at the University of Kent.-Biography:...

, Cathi Unsworth

Cathi Unsworth

Cathi Unsworth is an English writer and journalist. After working for Melody Maker and Bizarre, she began writing novels, with The Not Knowing in 2005 and The Singer in 2007, on Serpent's Tail...

 and Helen Walsh

Helen Walsh

Helen Walsh is an English writer. To date she has written three novels: Brass , Once Upon a Time in England , and Go to Sleep , all of which have been published by Canongate.-Biography:...

 as well as Jon Savage

Jon Savage

Jon Savage , real name Jonathon Sage, is a Cambridge-educated writer, broadcaster and music journalist, best known for his award winning history of the Sex Pistols and punk music, England's Dreaming, published in 1991.-Career:...

 and Simon Critchley

Simon Critchley

Simon Critchley is an English philosopher currently teaching at The New School. He works in continental philosophy. Critchley argues that philosophy commences in disappointment, either religious or political...

. The magazine also interviews figures in the underground press, such as Lisa Crystal Carver

Lisa Crystal Carver

Lisa Crystal Carver , also known as Lisa Suckdog, is an American writer known for her writing in Rollerderby. Through her interviews, she introduced the work of Vaginal Davis, Dame Darcy, Cindy Dall, Boyd Rice, Costes , Nick Zedd, GG Allin, Kate Landau, Queen Itchie & Liz Armstrong to many...

, Lydia Lunch

Lydia Lunch

Lydia Lunch is an American singer, poet, writer, and actress whose career was spawned by the New York No Wave scene...

, Mick Farren

Mick Farren

Michael Anthony 'Mick' Farren is an English journalist, author and singer associated with counterculture and the UK Underground.-Music:...

 and Pleasant Gehman

Pleasant Gehman

Pleasant Gehman is a magazine writer, poet, actor, dancer and musician from Los Angeles.In the 1980s, she was the singer for the punk rock band Screamin' Sirens, and later, The RIngling Sisters and Honk If Yer Horny. All three bands have released numerous titles on vinyl, as well as cd...

. Recently it has carried poetry by Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski

Henry Charles Bukowski was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles...

 and featured interviews by Bukowski acolyte Ben Pleasants, including with John Fante

John Fante

John Fante was an American novelist, short story writer and screenwriter of Italian descent. He is perhaps best known for his work, Ask the Dust, a semi-autobiograpical novel about life in and around Los Angeles, California, which was the third in a series of four novels, published between 1938...

 and Steve Richmond

Steve Richmond

Steven L. Richmond is a retired professional ice hockey player who played 159 games in the National Hockey League. He played with the New York Rangers, New Jersey Devils, Detroit Red Wings, and Los Angeles Kings...

.

Tom McCarthy

Tom McCarthy (writer)

-Life and work:Tom McCarthy is a writer and conceptual artist. He was born in 1969 and lives in central London. McCarthy grew up in Greenwich, south London and was educated at Dulwich College and later New College, Oxford, where he studied English literature. He lived in Prague, Berlin and...

 (whom it championed from the outset of his writing career) has written several pieces for 3:AM and appeared at a number of its events. 3:AM Editor Andrew Gallix runs the unofficial Tom McCarthy site 'Surplus Matter' It has reviewed, interviewed and run excerpts of avant-garde writers Lydia Lunch

Lydia Lunch

Lydia Lunch is an American singer, poet, writer, and actress whose career was spawned by the New York No Wave scene...

, Stephen Barber

Stephen Barber (writer)

Stephen Barber is a Professor at Kingston University's and a writer on urban culture, experiment in film and Japanese culture. Barber has been a Professor at Kingston University since 2002, and is currently a Research Professor in the Visual and Material Culture Research Centre, Faculty of Art,...

 and Stewart Home

Stewart Home

Stewart Home is an English artist, filmmaker, writer, pamphleteer, art historian, and activist. He is best known for his novels such as the non-narrative 69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess , his re-imagining of the 1960s in Tainted Love , and earlier parodistic pulp fictions Pure Mania, Red...

. Former Kenickie

Kenickie

Kenickie were a four-piece rock band from Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, England. The band were formed in 1994 and consisted of lead vocalist, guitarist and lyricist Lauren Laverne , drummer Johnny X , lead guitarist and occasional vocalist Marie du Santiago and bass guitarist Emmy-Kate Montrose...

 and Brian Jonestown Massacre keyboardist turned novelist Tony O'Neill

Tony O'Neill

Tony O'Neill is a New York-based author. A one time musician with Kenickie , Marc Almond , The Brian Jonestown Massacre and Kelli Ali , O'Neill is also the author of several books including Digging The Vein 2006, Down and Out on Murder Mile 2008 and Sick City 2010.Digging the Vein was a novel...

 is a regular contributor and interviewee.

In recent years it has become eminent in the translation of European avant-garde poetry under its 'Maintenant' series.

Regular columnists include Sophie Parkin

Sophie Parkin

Sophie Parkin is an English writer, artist and actor, born in London in 1961.She was schooled at Frensham Heights Boarding School, then Camborne School of Mines, Pool, nr Redruth, Cornwall...

, Ben Myers

Ben Myers

Ben Myers is an English writer.His first novel The Book Of Fuck, a fictionalised account about a hapless music journalist, was published to underground acclaim in 2004 through Wrecking Ball Press. Myers claimed it was written in six days "as a joke"...

, Hillary Raphael

Hillary Raphael

Hillary Raphael is an American novelist.Raphael holds an MFA in Fiction from Hunter College in New York City where she won the MFA Thesis Prize for her novel, I Love Lord Buddha...

 and Cathi Unsworth

Cathi Unsworth

Cathi Unsworth is an English writer and journalist. After working for Melody Maker and Bizarre, she began writing novels, with The Not Knowing in 2005 and The Singer in 2007, on Serpent's Tail...

. Past editors have included Noah Cicero

Noah Cicero

Noah Cicero is an American novelist, short-story writer, and poet. He lives in Youngstown, Ohio, and is the author of six books of fiction:...

, Heidi James, Travis Jeppesen

Travis Jeppesen

Travis Jeppesen , Florida is an American novelist, poet, and art critic.He grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina and moved to New York City at the age of 17. He received his B.A. from The New School, where he studied literature and philosophy...

, Chris Killen, Tao Lin

Tao Lin

Tao Lin is an American writer. He was born of Taiwanese parents and grew up on the East Coast of the USA.He is the author of two novels, Eeeee Eee Eeee and Richard Yates ; a novella, Shoplifting from American Apparel ; a short story collection, Bed ; and two poetry collections, you are a little...

 (as Poetry Editor), Lee Rourke

Lee Rourke

Lee Rourke is a writer and editor. He is the author of the short story collection Everyday and the novel The Canal published by Melville House Publishing...

, Adelle Stripe

Adelle Stripe

Adelle Stripe is a poet from Tadcaster, North Yorkshire. In 2006, alongside Tony O'Neill and Ben Myers she formed possibly the first literary movement spawned via a social networking site, The Brutalists, who the BBC described as a 'group of young writers with a back-to-basics approach to...

 and HP Tinker

HP Tinker

HP Tinker is a Manchester-based short story writer whose avant garde fiction has frequently been compared to Borges and Donald Barthelme...

.