J. C. Gabel

Background

About J. C. Gabel

I began my career in publishing, almost accidentally, in my teenage years growing up in the suburbs of Chicago. My friends and I made fanzines with our friends—kindred spirits and fellow travelers at Kinkos and a string of independent photocopy shops that sprung up in the 1990s—the birth of desktop publishing. Then, in the mid-’90s, I cut and pasted the first few editions of Stop Smiling, “The Magazine for High-Minded Lowlifes,” as it came to be known. Stop Smiling would be published regularly for 15 years, modeled on “the glory days of magazine publishing”—1960s Esquire, early Rolling Stone, vintage Playboy, INTERVIEW when Andy Warhol ran it, the National Lampoon, et cetera—and grew into a full-color glossy periodical with timeless themes, original stories and interviews you couldn’t read anywhere else. James Hughes and I helmed the magazine for a decade together. I couldn’t think of a better way to spend our 20s and early 30s. We edited and published some timeless interviews with some of our heroes before they passed. In 2010, I made my first foray into books as an editor and publisher, in various forms, including the short-lived Stop Smiling Books, in addition to working as a regular freelance writer for Playboy, Bookforum, The Paris Review, LA Times, NY Times, Wall Street Journal, and Wallpaper. Then in 2012, I moved from Chicago to Los Angeles, where I began editing books for the trade for Chronicle, Phaidon and Taschen. Throughout 2013-2014 I also helped build and edit the short-lived but much-loved print quarterly, The Pitchfork Review, with a close-knit group of collaborators who I still call my friends today. As Editorial Director, Publisher and Co-Founder of Hat & Beard Press since 2016, I have edited and published over 100 books. During the COVID shutdown of 2020-2021, I helped found Invisible Republic, a nonprofit arts organization, as well as Big Table, a books-centric podcast modeled on Studs Terkel’s long-running radio show, which was rooted in unscripted conversation. Both are run with the help of dub lab, who are our fiscal sponsor and kindred spirits in arts programming.