Hi,

It’s March. We almost can’t believe our eyes and skin but there are glimmers of spring peaking through. Don’t get too excited (we’re saying this to ourselves), there will surely be more cold days ahead. Also Daylight Savings just happened (where we are, at least).

Following that reminder, we’re thinking about how ridiculous Daylight Savings is and listening to the Jurassic Park Theme (1000% slower). What have you been thinking about? What are you listening to?

Are.na API v3

Our biggest news for this newsletter is that the new Are.na API (v3) is ready for you to use. For the non-technical among us: an API (Application Programming Interface) allows a person to fetch and modify data to and from Are.na, programmatically. It’s essentially a way for anyone to build applications using data and functionality from Are.na.

This has been a long time coming and we’ve laid a lot of groundwork to make this possible. The result is so much nicer than our previous API: faster, more logical, extremely well-documented, and much more comprehensive.

You can explore the API by clicking on the drop-down menu of any block, channel, or profile page. Or by heading to the developers explore page.

We’re excited about the possibilities and looking forward to seeing what people build.

iOS Updates

iOS-wise, the updates keep rolling in. The most notable of the changes being: search filters, profile search, channel search, pinning blocks to the top of a channel, and drag and drop re-ordering. Can you believe it? It’s like all of our dreams keep coming true.

Call for Submissions: Are.na Annual Vol 8

It’s already that time again, when we open up submissions for the forthcoming Are.na Annual. This will be the eighth volume of our yearly printed anthology of writings from the people on Are.na; as always, we’re asking for ideas for pieces that start with an Are.na channel and speak to a given theme. This year, the theme is “score,” as in to secure an advantage; to gain points in a game; to keep record or account; a cut, notch, or groove; a group of twenty; a musical composition; a grudge.

The deadline for pitches is Monday, April 20, 2026 at 11:59pm EST. More information on what we’re looking for and how to pitch can be found here.

We also started an open channel as a collective repository of ideas around this theme, and people have already been adding some really nice references.

In other Annual news, supply for the Are.na Annual Vol 7: Pool is getting low, so if you’ve been thinking about purchasing one from the Gift Shop and haven’t yet, the time is now.

You can also find Annuals in the following bookstores: Iconic Magazines (NYC), Casa Magazines (NYC), Bungee Space (NYC), Printed Matter (NYC), Isolde (NYC), Skylight (LA), TOMO Mags (Austin), TYPE Books (Toronto), Cahier Central (Paris), MagCulture (London), rile*books (Brussels), and Separate Spaces (Seoul).

Are.na Editorial

Online this month, we published two personal essays from the Are.na Annual Vol 7:

In Learning to Float, Peter Johnson writes about learning to swim as an adult, letting go of control, and the weightlessness that can result from surrender.

And in The Kingdom of Misfits, Lee Stark goes looking for slime molds in Prospect Park and discovers their deep resiliency, their ability to manipulate and step outside of linear time.

We also published the latest in our Learning in Public series: an interview with Vida Rucli of Robida Collective, a group of friends living and working together in the border mountains between Slovenia and Italy. We spoke about the idea of “total hospitality” and opening up their homes to create space for communal learning.

Are.na Community Newspaper

In case you missed it, yesterday we sent out our first issue of the Are.na Community Newspaper, which will publish short, human-interest pieces focused on the Are.na community. Regular sections of the newspaper include Are.na Classifieds, upcoming events, news, a member spotlight, and a featured channel. Issue #1 featured the people behind the new apartment gallery Isolde; Justin Liang’s Are.na iPhone Screenshot Widgets channel; a new Are.na Pairing Service orchestrated by Laurel Schwulst; and more.

We’re publishing the newspaper once a month exclusively through the Editorial newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.

Press

Our CEO Charles Broskoski was recently on the podcast Dialectic, where he talked to Jackson Dahl about knowing yourself, noticing patterns, casual research, and personal business.

We were happy to be noted as an example in Sam Taylor’s piece on software with enduring shelf-life for garden3d’s newsletter TK. Sam writes:

Are.na isn’t a platform because it has channels and blocks. It’s a platform because it presents a belief (using product design) about research being calm and intentional, and the technology lets people who are committed to that belief learn together.

Are.na got a nice shout out on the podcast Complementary with guest Laura Sinisterra. (Also a nice shout-out to Are.na idol Elizabeth Goodspeed.)

And Caitlyn gave a great primer on how they use Are.na in the Substack Milk Fed. We also liked Caitlyn’s description of Are.na:

are.na is a digital version of spreading articles, notes, images, and questions across a table and seeing what starts to connect to each other.

Community News

@dazy_chains on TikTok had a nice video taking us through the Are.na Annual Vol. 7: Pool, and highlighted in particular Everest Pipkin’s essay on video game water levels, as well as Nora Chellew on honeymoon hotels and Kate Johnson on typing pools.

Bartek Pierściński is currently working on a project that would enable the creation of research-driven websites by syncing Are.na data to Sanity databases. Bartek developed this while working on the website of an another Are.na member, Melisa Cenik. Bartek says, “I’m doing it because I believe connecting Are.na and another CMS tool that extends Are.na’s abilities can be a very powerful tool for independent publishing and creative people in general.”

Applications are open for Triple Canopy’s excellent publication intensive, a two-week program dedicated to the history and contemporary practice of publication. Tuition is free and they also offer food and commuting stipends as well as a limited number of travel grants.

Connie has made inprogress.works, a lightweight accountability community for your side projects. We love this notion: “doing anything consistently for a year is bound to spark change.”

And in case you missed it, Shelby Shaw reviewed Are.na CTO Damon Zucconi’s recent exhibition Neurofiction for Screen Slate.

Read and add more community news in our Community News channel.

Roadmap

As always, you can check out our roadmap page which goes into the features we're building, our long-term goals, and our current numbers.

There are so many places you can spend your attention, and we’re touched that you spent it reading this letter.

deep bows,
The Are.na Team