06/12/2026

On Tuesday a whole pallet turned up at our door. We unpacked the boxes straight away, pulled out the first copy, and — it’s exactly the one we’d been picturing since September. The paper, the colours, all of it. A very good day.

Then came the less photogenic stuff: working out where to fit a small mountain of boxes without losing the apartment entirely, and finishing every copy by hand. We’re cutting the intro pages one at a time, which takes ages but is weirdly soothing.

In parallel we’ve started printing the photos for the little exhibition that’ll go up at both launch nights — a way to let the images from the issue live a bit outside the pages. Which brings us to the fun part:

Marseille, Saturday June 20 at Îlot Central, from 7pm.
Paris, Wednesday June 24 at Floréal Belleville, from 6:30pm, with some of the writers reading their own pieces out loud. Come hang out, grab a drink, flip through the issue with us.
Thanks to everyone who helped get us here — the contributors, the spaces, and you for following along. See you in Marseille and Paris.

The first issue of Coup de Soleil sold out, so naturally, we got to work on a second one. This time the theme arrived almost on its own: a poetic summer. We won’t over-explain it — that’s sort of the point — but think long afternoons, soft light, and the slightly lazy feeling of a season that’s in no hurry.

To fill it, we put out an open call online, but honestly most of our time went into hunting for people ourselves. We spent a lot of evenings deep in Instagram, sending messages to artists, photographers and writers whose work made us stop scrolling. Some said yes. Putting the final line-up together took a while, and a fair bit of agonizing, but we’re really proud of who’s in it.

Since September we’ve been meeting once or twice a week to actually build the thing, mostly at the Gaïté Lyrique, sometimes whatever café will have us. Some sessions are calm and slow, the good kind where you can fuss over a single margin for half an hour. Others are full-on rush days where everything seems to land at the same time. Both, it turns out, are part of the deal.
And then there’s the part nobody sees: redoing the chemin de fer for the hundredth time, falling down are.na rabbit holes for “references,” testing layouts, chasing print quotes, and sending an honestly embarrassing number of emails (some of which even get answered). Slowly, page by page, it’s becoming a magazine.

More very soon.