Emilia Weber, co-founder of Letters From The City, got in contact to share with us her beautiful work. This charming quarterly zine, features anecdotes, short stories and pieces from local artists. When reading you can’t help but reflect and acknowledge the qualities Glasgow has. For me, as it’s been written by people not originally from Glasgow, it captures a sense of appreciation, interpretation and observance that the natives sometimes miss. The next issue is out in April, read on to hear what Emilia had to say and also, how to find one of these limited gems.

‘Letters From The City; An Illustrated Glasgow Philavery’ is a Glasgow based creative arts quarterly that was conceived and created in the summer of 2009 by Lewis Irvine, Emilia Weber and Charlotte Wainwright over a kitchen table strewed with Rubicon cartons and tobacco packets. We decided that we should stop talking about the exciting things we wanted to do, and actually do them.

We knew there were other magazines dedicated to Glaswegian writing or art or photography but nothing that brought all of these together, so we decided to create a space in which people could have their photographs, drawings and musings inspired by the city published. We wanted it to be affordable and beautiful; accessible to anyone.

We had all moved here from other cities and although we were aware of our ‘foreign’ status in Glasgow, we hoped that us choosing to move here and loving the city was a good enough reason to create this. Our boundless adoration is complemented by all of our fantastic contributors who bring their own personal views, connections and portrayals of the many faces of this city to the magazine.

The A5, forty page magazine is filled by submissions from miscellaneous Glasgow artists, many of whom we never meet, and by obliging friends of friends. We also give the middle of the magazine to a Glasgow based art graduate and they exclusively compose a centrespread for us, accompanied by a piece outlining their feelings about art and what keeps them in Glasgow. After a lot of trawling through shops and smiling sweetly, the magazine is now available to purchase from nine independent retailers around Glasgow, including Monorail, Volitaire & Rousseau and Aye Aye Books in the CCA (a complete list can be found on our website).

Our fourth issue is in the making and will be in the shops on the first of April. As always, we are looking for contributors, and their pretty musings about these windy streets, their overheard conversations, their hidden histories, their loves and losses and anything else anyone wants to share with us. Your words and pictures about the city we live in and the city around which our lives revolve.

Photography by Alexander Martin