Interview
After Hugh Weber’s death, The Great Discontent went quiet. Grief was part of the reason, but bringing it back also raised a harder question: what was the magazine becoming? In this letter, TGD editor-in-chief Sheharazad Fleming shares why the publication is returning to print, and only print. She also explores how Hugh’s attention shifted toward overlooked creative voices and communities, and why the future of TGD is less about restarting what once existed and more about carrying forward what it was becoming. It is a vision for a slower, more intentional publication built to circulate far beyond algorithms, feeds, and follower counts.

Interview
Hugh Weber thought a lot about legacy. Not as something grand or permanent, but as the accumulation of small things we leave behind for other people to discover. That belief shaped his work, his communities, and eventually his stewardship of The Great Discontent. In this letter TGD editor-in-chief, Sheharazad Fleming tells the story of Hugh, the family that shaped him, and the invisible threads that continue long after someone is gone—and extends an invitation to help shape what comes next.

Interview
Britt Reilly's work lives at the intersection of immersive visual arts, historic architecture and preservation, and modernist design. She is the executive director and collections curator at the Irving and Aaronel deRoy Gruber Foundation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and has worked with world-renowned artists and exhibitions like the Carnegie International, and dOCUMENTA (13). Britt spoke with us about local wanderlust, the magic of preservation, and the benefits of a great discontent.

Interview
Rafael Espinal was just 26 when he became an elected official. For the next 10 years, he worked within the halls of government, first as a New York State Assemblymember and then as a New York City Councilmember, advocating for artists, independent workers, and underserved communities. He is now at the helm of the Freelancers Union, where he’s putting his experience to work growing the Freelance Isn’t Free movement across the country.

Interview
Brad Montague is an illustrator, speaker, picture book author, video creator, and all-around maker. He’s a self-proclaimed dreamer and doer. Above all, he’s a storyteller, “working to create a better world for kids with kids” through Montague Workshop, the creative studio he runs with his wife Kristi in Henderson, Tennessee.

Interview
Schessa Garbutt is the founder of the Inglewood–based design studio, Firebrand. An educator, lecturer, and published essayist (see: The Black Experience in Design anthology). Garbutt works at the intersection of co-design practices and making huge, mind-bending ideas and histories ring clear as a bell. Garbutt spoke with The Great Discontent about cultural memory as the foundation for their practice, the pains of delegating, and the strength of rooting in a local community.

Interview
When Earlonne Woods and Nigel Poor came up with the idea for Ear Hustle, the podcast they’ve hosted together since 2017, Earlonne was serving a prison sentence of 31 years to life—the result of California’s three-strikes law. The two met at San Quentin State Prison where Nigel, a lifelong artist and photographer, was volunteering in the media center. For 13 seasons, Earlonne and Nigel have been sharing the experiences of those living life on the inside.

Interview
“Everyone eats. There's so much beauty in realizing that humaneness and that oneness.” This is the ethos of Luke Zahm. The James Beard-nominated chef, host of the hit PBS show Wisconsin Foodie, and owner of the widely acclaimed Driftless Café in Viroqua, Wisconsin, believes food is a powerful force for connection.

Interview
Mira Nakashima has helmed Nakashima Woodworkers, now a 21-building complex and National Historic Landmark since her father's passing in 1990. As she writes in her new book, The Nakashima Process Book, each piece is “the culmination of much effort, a conscious simplification of design that allows the wood to tell its own story, modulated by an architect’s eye for proportions and structure.”