Emily Makere Broadmore is the director of Beyond Logic, a creative-intelligence consultancy in New Zealand that explores the intersection of literature, commerce and cultural disruption.

Alongside the agency, Emily publishes Folly, a literary magazine answering the question, ‘What happens when a literary journal has a torrid love affair with a Victorian gossip rag?’ The result is a wordy magazine that causes a stir—the third issue has just been banned by one of New Zealand’s major high street shops. Emily explains more as she answers our weekly Q&A.

What are you doing this morning?
It’s the Monday morning after the Folly party, our annual all-night rave held in a haunted heritage building with a spiralling staircase at its centre. I didn’t eat breakfast because I was still a little hungover, but by midday I found myself downstairs at Fred’s Sandwiches on Cuba Street eating what can only be described as KFC between white bread. It cost $21, which tells you everything you need to know about the cost of living in New Zealand right now.

I commute on a Tern cargo e-bike. I used to have my kids on the back; these days it’s more likely a box of groceries, my laptop, or the dog. It’s only a five-minute ride around Oriental Bay to the office. Wellington is the tiniest capital in the world. I go past a national bookstore chain, Whitcoulls, to check our stock is out and discover it’s not. The floor staff give me the side eye and mumble an excuse; two days later, we discover the third issue of Folly has been deemed ‘too offensive’ for the shelves of 47 stores around the country). 

Describe your work environment
The Folly office doubles as the Wellington Writers’ Studio, which I founded in 2023. It’s in the same building as Saturday’s rave—a century-old photography studio overlooking Cuba Street. The space often doubles as a set for film shoots. My “desk” is actually a boardroom table.

From where I sit, I can see a four-poster bed in the corner still draped in netting, bay-leaf branches from the party, and a couple of stray whips we haven’t tidied away yet. This morning two of our Writers’ Studio members came in early. We made a pot of tea and traded stories from Saturday night’s chaos. Who drank the breastmilk in the Russian Roulette etc. Right now I’ve got Thievery Corporation, Billie Eilish, and Gotye on rotation (the DJ played Somebody That I Used to Know at 2 a.m. and the whole building screamed along).

Which magazine do you first remember?
Girlfriend or maybe Top of the Pops. I was about ten. I tore out every poster and plastered them across my room, even though I had no idea who most of the people were. My father was slightly horrified to find his daughter suddenly surrounded by men.

Aside from yours, what’s your favourite magazine/zine? Why?
The New Yorker. It’s perfection in print. I roll them up and shove them in my handbag for flights. Sometimes I’ll save a whole stack to take on holiday. We actually had a New Yorker contributor working from the Writers’ Studio for a while—he wrote a piece for Folly about the drug scene in New Zealand. It was nearly censored in Hong Kong. Good writing should make someone somewhere nervous.

What other piece of media would you recommend? And why?
LinkedIn. Honestly. It’s one of the few positive social spaces left. Everyone’s polite, no one’s performatively outraged, and you can actually meet people doing interesting things. I’ve used it to connect with editors and publishers internationally — in Melbourne, for example, I met Esther Anatolian, former editor of Meanjin, purely through a LinkedIn message. It’s where thought leadership still exists without irony.

Describe Folly in three words.
Intelligent. Fun. Sexy.

Each issue has a lot of contributions in it; what is the common thread that holds the different pieces together?
Entertainment. Every piece in Folly must be enjoyable to read—something you can finish over a coffee, a cocktail, or while waiting for the bus. The writing can be provocative or insightful, but it can’t ask too much of its readers. The literary world often forgets that readers have phones, and attention spans to match. We’re not competing with other journals; we’re competing with doom-scrolling.

So every story earns its place by offering delight, wit, or insight.

You stress ‘fun’ a lot. Do you feel literary magazines are sometimes too serious?
Definitely. Folly is serious about ideas but unserious about itself. Our launch events are a good example—instead of polite speeches and pinot noir, we host a rave with poetry performers and actors. It’s cultural cross-pollination—art disguised as entertainment. If people come for the fun and leave with a copy of Folly under their arm, we’ve done our job.

Show us one spread that sums up how the magazine works.
This year, one of my favourite juxtapositions is a story titled ‘At Least My Pussy’s Smooth’ which was written by a consultant from one of the Big Five and I placed it directly before an interview with the Reserve Bank’s chief economist titled ‘Why the New Zealand Economy Is Fucked.’ The accompanying artwork is a nude woman with a snake over her pussy. That spread is pure Folly. We take readers on a journey, and keep them turning the page. I often get messages from people saying they’ve just read it cover to cover. We are a global publication, at least half our contributors are international, and the content is likewise global. Where we do slip in very New Zealand focused work, we do it in a way that makes it fun.

Tell us a little about magazines in New Zealand. Are there many indies? Where does Folly sit?
The publication industry in New Zealand is dire. There’s only one other serious print literary journal in New Zealand, and it’s funded by a university. There are a few zine-style ones, online or photocopied and stapled together. Most of the good ones, that publish quality journalism, have been shutting down or going online only. We aren’t trying to compete with this dying industry, Folly is something else entirely. Commercial, design-driven, premium. And it’s international, we purposely welcome and curate content from around the world.

When issue one came out, the literary community said, “This looks very commercial.” We faced a lot of judgement for actually creating a product aimed to sell, for publishing content that is fun rather than ‘literary’. New Zealanders are a funny bunch, we are a tiny island at the bottom of the world. People are territorial, and don’t like to feel like there are newcomers turning up and changing things. But we’ve simply built a luxury product people actually want to own. On Friday night I walked into Ortega, one of Wellington’s best restaurants, and saw a woman dining alone, Folly placed elegantly on the table beside her dessert. That’s the brand in a single image: literature as an accessory of taste.


What has publishing the magazine taught you that may be helpful to anyone else planning to launch one?
That naivety is a gift. I didn’t know the politics, the cliques, or the obstacles when I started Folly. I just thought it would be fun. And maybe that’s why it worked. The secret is persistence, a clear aesthetic, and not being afraid of what people think. An artist said to us on Saturday that when they first read Folly, they thought we’d be cancelled, but “instead everyone’s loving it.” It resonates because it’s honest, surprising, sexy and alive.

What are you most looking forward to this coming week?
Rest, mostly. And spotting the Folly buses. We’ve just launched a national campaign recreating the famous Sex and the City bus ad across the side of city buses. I can’t wait to find one, stand in front of it in heels, and take ridiculous Carrie Bradshaw photos for social.

Editor Emily Makere Broadmore
Art director Dana Turner

follyjournal.com