About — Miruta

About Miruta

Lisbon, since 2015

Independent & reader-funded

We publish less, on purpose.

Miruta is an independent journal of essays, field notes and conversations, written and edited in a small Lisbon studio and sent to 48,000 readers every Sunday.

A spiral notebook and a glass of water on a warm wooden table

Fig. 02 — The first notebook, 2015

01 — Our story

It started as a Sunday email to forty friends.

In the spring of 2015, Inês Calado was tired of reading in fragments. She began writing one long letter every Sunday morning and sending it to the forty people she most wanted to talk to. They replied — at length, by hand, from the margins of their week.

Eleven years later Miruta is a small team, a shared desk on Rua das Flores and 312 essays that are still worth reading. We have never run an ad, never sold a list and never sent more than one email a week.

Readers fund the journal directly. That freedom lets us publish slowly, pay our writers properly and print the occasional letter from a stranger in Osaka who found the right sentence at the right time.

02 — What we believe

Four promises to every reader

01

Slow over fast

Every piece spends at least a week in the drawer before anyone else reads it.

02

Readers, not metrics

No ads, no tracking pixels, no growth hacks. Just a letter you chose to receive.

03

Every word edited

Two editors read each essay aloud before it is sent. Typos still happen; we apologise in the next issue.

04

Writers paid fairly

Contributors are paid on acceptance, at rates we publish openly every January.

03 — How we publish

One week, one issue

The same rhythm every week since 2015. It is slower than it needs to be, and that is the point.

01 — Monday

Pitch & read

The team trades ideas over coffee and chooses one essay to pursue.

02 — Tue — Wed

Into the drawer

The draft is written, printed and left alone for a day.

03 — Thursday

Edit aloud

Two editors read it out loud, line by line, pencil in hand.

04 — Friday

Pictures & layout

Amara chooses one photograph and the issue gets its shape.

05 — Sunday, 7:00

Send

The letter leaves Lisbon. Replies start arriving by lunch.

04 — The masthead

The people at the desk

Four editors in Lisbon and a rotating cast of contributors from Porto to Montréal.

Inês Calado

Founding Editor

Inês started Miruta in 2015 as a Sunday email to forty friends. She edits every issue, writes the essays nobody asked for and still answers reader letters by hand.

Tomás Weller

Essays Editor

A former bookseller from Porto, Tomás looks after the long reads and the reading lists. He believes every essay should survive being read aloud.

Kofi Asante

Contributing Writer

Kofi writes about work, tools and the habits behind good sentences. His conversations series has run since Issue Nº 9.

Amara Lind

Field Notes & Photography

Amara shoots every photograph in the journal on a 35 mm lens and files her field notes from wherever the light is good.

Contributors

Have an essay in the drawer?

We commission twelve outside pieces a year. Send a short pitch and a sample of your writing.

Pitch an idea

Read the FAQ