Off Assignment

Off Assignment is a non-profit literary magazine with a penchant for journeys and a fascination with strangers. Born out of a desire to tell “the story behind the story," we’ve evolved from a journalists’ after-hour parlor to a home for literary essays about journeys, broadly defined. OA began when co-founder Colleen Kinder invited legendary journalist Pico Iyer to her Yale writing class. She expected Pico to analyze the essay she’d assigned to her students: a classic portrait of Reykjavik he had authored two decades earlier. But he digressed into a tale he had never put to the page, about a magnetic local with whom he’d wandered Iceland’s unfading summer streets. This stranger dominated Pico’s memories of his reporting trip. Struck by this, Colleen asked fellow writers: Have you ever had a story you wanted to write, behind an assignment? They answered: Always. Colleen then joined forces with digital media strategist Vince Errico to co-found Off Assignment as a space for the raw, personal stories not found in mainstream publications—tales that honor the digressions inherent to every journey. Our flagship column, “Letter to a Stranger,” launched in 2016. It now spans over 80 countries, features award-winning missives, and is immortalized in a print anthology. We’ve since expanded to include more columns, weaving interviews and illustrations into our story-telling: “No Equivalent” plumbs the depths of words that resist translation into English; “Under the Influence” explores the interplay between art and place; “Witching Hour” features brief, ambient portraits of places at a specific time of day; “What I Didn’t Say” taps authors to release the untold stories behind their published work; and “Goodbye to that Place” gives space to unique farewells. Off Assignment aims to put forth a new kind of travel writing: one that not only transports readers across geographical borders, but plunges them deeper into the human experience.