Metropole café and bar, hidden in the shade of Riegrovy sady on Anny Letenské street, did more than play host to the Feb. 3 launch party. Blatt's publisher, Anagram co-owner Miro Peraica, has opened a branch of his bookstore adjacent to the café. And the place was packed for the launch, with schmoozing expats and aspiring writers ebbing and flowing toward the bar and the buffet and spilling into the bookstore, where copies of Blatt's first issue were on display.

Only 300 copies of the issue were printed, and Editor-in-Chief Travis Jeppesen was promoting it as a "collector's item" — at 150 Kč a pop. Half the copies are headed to the United States for distribution in New York City and Los Angeles.

Jeppesen and Editor Joshua Cohen — both former Prague Pill-ers — were editors of the Prague Literary Review, and have brought art director Mario Dzurila along with them to Blatt. The new title is a German word that translates as "a blank surface, a clean slate."

"Better distribution," writes Cohen from New York City when asked how Blatt compares to the PLR, "and better design (color)." Under its new publisher, he continues, the team wants to "establish both the magazine and a books imprint internationally, and to set ourselves up as an important conduit between languages, cultures, artists, writers and their mothers." On the more festive side, he adds, "We'd like to get invited to more fabulous poetry festivals where it's warm and there's free wine."

Cohen was in New York promoting the Stateside launch of Blatt. According to Jeppesen, the PLR in its time flew off the shelves there — while here it languished untouched and relatively unnoticed — and the new team is ready to capitalize on where the interest lies.

"Diversify or die," Peraica says passionately when asked to explain his decision to take on Blatt. When he, Jeppesen, Cohen and Dzurila started talking about the project, he says, they all shared the goal of improving the PLR and expanding its audience: "If you want to prosper, you have to think about image using a various range of skills — even marketing by advertising or word of mouth or something else. But stay cool."

So far, the new publisher has been the biggest change in the magazine. Under the wing of PLR publisher Roman Kratochvíla of Shakespeare & Sons, Jeppesen says, he and Cohen were completely on their own, left to handle the administration as well as the "fun, intellectual side of things." Connecting with Peraica set them off in a new direction.

Jeppesen says that plans for the new review include showcasing writers who are "difficult, experimental, who are being overlooked" by the mainstream media, making them more accessible. As he writes in his opening editorial, "Blatt is the end of the beginning."