And the winner is...

The results of our survey are in and we've got big plans!

After a month of gathering insights from our community, we’ve just hit send on an email to the lucky winner of our subscriber survey prize (congratulations!). While we wish we could reward everyone, we wanted to share some exciting announcements about what we have planned for the months ahead based on your stellar input.

But first! Thank you.

Before we get to that, we want to take this opportunity to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone who took the time to provide us with feedback. We’re incredibly grateful for all of your rich ideas and warmed by your kind words. Here’s a little taste of what some of you said:

“Interesting & thought-provoking topics. Accessible articles and great podcasts.”

“Progressive journalism highlighting the direct connection between women, food, and other important themes.”

“It's bringing a feminist lens to food politics and culture that is desperately needed.”

“I love the diversity of writers and their unique perspectives; the daring content, and the powerful illustrations.”

“I’m so happy that FFJ exists.”

“I appreciate the topics — how you connect food to rest of the world. The pieces are so deep and beautifully written! I adore the language used in every piece.”

“The stories feel grounded and authentic. A true insight into our humanity in connection with food.”

We are listening

We learned a lot from reading through your responses about what’s working, what we could do better, and what kinds of additional content and engagement you — our readers — might enjoy from FFJ. We are full of longer-term ideas (stay tuned for those) but in the meantime, we are excited to announce two things…

1. MERCH MANIA

Are you envious of our survey draw winner? Fear not! We will soon be opening an online store where you can get your hands on premium FFJ merch, similar to promos we’ve previously offered only over the holidays. We’ll have tote bags a-plenty, as well as other exciting products featuring our favourite FFJ illustrations. We’re also going to try our best to gather our greatest hits into a coffee table volume. Expect an email from us once the merch store is up and running.

2. LIVE CHAT

Secondly, we will shortly be launching a paid subscriber-only Whatsapp group, dedicated to feminist food topics and resources, moderated by our editors. Want to chat about a piece of food writing that’s going viral, or even better, something that nobody has heard about yet? Know a cool woman or queer-owned restaurant or bar in your area that you want to hype up? Questions about something we’ve written or how things are going at FFJ? This will be a (we hope) fun and casual place to talk about it. Building community around the ideas and issues we cover in FFJ is important to us and we’re excited about creating this new space for exchange.

Paid subscribers should watch their inboxes for an invite link very soon. If this sound like something you’re interested in being a part of but you’re not yet a paid subscriber — now is the time to become one! Not only will you get to be a part of this exciting community, but you’ll also be supporting independent feminist media, and helping us to pay our writers a competitive rate. Every one of you counts.

As a paid subscriber, along with the Whatsapp group, you’ll also get access to:

• Audio versions of most magazine articles (often read by the authors themselves)

• Exclusive behind-the-scenes content — think less critical analysis, more open questions and belly laughs — which often includes recipes!

• Invitations to community-only events

Here’s what paid subscribers are saying about their subscriptions:

“I LOVE the option to listen to the articles read by the authors.”

“I love the audio and behind-the-scenes content.”

“I like being part of your meaningful work in some small way.”

In case you missed it

Finally, in case you haven’t caught up on our emails, here’s a quick round-up of what’s new and exciting on FFJ:

• We published our first-ever Spanish translation of an FFJ piece. You can read and listen to “Sin ellas no hay maíz ni país” in our EARTH issue, now en español. Many thanks to María Villalpando (the author of this fabulous piece) and Ignacio Ahijado for making this translation happen.

• The latest piece from our CITY issue, “Happy Family”, by Alison Wong, offers reflections on how gender and race have influenced labour dynamics in the United States through the prism of her family’s Chinese restaurant in The Bronx. It received a record number of comments! Be sure to check them out when you read it. Paid subscribers can also access an audio recording of the piece, read by Alison.

• We’ve still got a few pieces to go in our CITY issue, but we’ve already selected our lineup for our next issue, SEA. We received more than 200 story ideas for this forthcoming issue — another new record for us — so we had to make some very tough decisions. We’re so grateful to everyone who took the time to share their brilliant ideas with us and everyone who helped spread the word about our call for pitches. It’s thanks to you that we can publish the stories we do.

As you can tell, we really are brimming with gratitude! Thank you for making this work possible and for engaging with us on these topics that we find so fascinating. Please keep the comments coming! We love to hear your reflections and feelings about the work we publish and are excited to engage more deeply with some of you on Whatsapp soon.