Different Leaf just announced that the debut issue of their newly reimagined editorial model is guest-edited by multidisciplinary contemporary artist Nick Cave and creative director, artist, and designer Bob Faust. Known for their creative partnership across visual art, performance, architecture, and activism, Cave and Faust bring a deeply personal and culturally resonant perspective to curating this publication’s visual, editorial, and thematic issue in collaboration with the magazine’s editorial team.
This first release under Different Leaf’s new editorial model is set to go on sale in September 2025.
The inaugural guest-edited issue will highlight artists and creatives from the city of Chicago, the Midwest, and beyond. Drawing on the pair’s respective connections to the region, Faust being a Chicago native and Cave having lived there for over 30 years, the issue will highlight the area’s creative landscape and artistic legacy, while honoring its deep roots and influence on art and culture today.
Since its launch in 2019, the Massachusetts-based magazine has printed quarterly issues elevating the conversation around cannabis within the context of medicine, travel, food, and culture. Tapping into a global network of creatives, Different Leaf navigated years of a rapidly growing national cannabis industry. After pausing in 2023, the magazine returned in early 2025 with a new model shifting from industry-focused cannabis coverage to culture-defining storytelling, placing artists at the editorial helm of the platform. Each biannual print issue will be guest-edited by a different visionary from the creative world who curates contributors, themes, and design from the ground up, in collaboration with Different Leaf’s editorial and design teams, and newly appointed curators Denise Markonish, Chief Curator at the Madison Square Park Conservancy, and Ryan Schreiber, founder and former Editor-in-Chief of Pitchfork who now heads boutique artist management and consulting agency, xtra/credit.
“We’re thrilled to debut our new platform with Nick and Bob, whose work embodies the kind of boundary-pushing creativity and cultural reflection that Different Leaf champions,”
said Michael Kusek, Founder of Different Leaf.
“By inviting visionary artists to shape each issue from the ground up, we’re creating space for deeper dialogues around connection, social transformation, and the evolving role of cannabis in contemporary life. Each season will reflect where culture is, and where it’s going.”
Inaugurating this new format is a collaboration between Markonish, multidisciplinary contemporary artist Nick Cave, and creative director, artist, and designer Bob Faust. Cave and Faust have shared a deep commitment to exploring identity, healing, and community through their multidisciplinary collaborative work, whether through large-scale public art or intimate acts of storytelling. Together, the duo’s body of work is a powerful blend of art, design, and community-focused activism, often collaborating on projects that merge Cave’s visual storytelling and performance art with Faust’s genre-bending conceptual art practice. Cave and Faust worked closely with Markonish to blend their distinct perspectives and artistic approach through a collection of stories, interviews, and selected artworks that represent the contemporary world’s relationships with art and cannabis, as well as the spaces in which the two converge.
“One of the safest and most intimate situations is holding a printed publication,” “While we have lost many publications that were regularly delivered to our homes, the ones that remain are serving in this way. Nick and I are thrilled to be working on the relaunch of Different Leaf as a new model of publication excellence, as we have the opportunity to deliver magazine-style features tied together through a singular story—and to do that through three different packages at differing price points–this feels like a laboratory experiment fueled by the word: yes.”
said artist Bob Faust.
“I have great respect for Michael Kusek and Denise Markonish and am loving the opportunity to share some incredible stories about culture makers that I admire, want to bring more light to, and to get to know personally,” “What a treat it is for me and Bob to share our vision for a new publication through various culture-making practices, writers, and image makers.”
says artist Nick Cave.
This announcement builds on the momentum of Different Leaf’s relaunch in February of this year, which included a newly designed website, the appointment of curators Denise Markonish and Ryan Schreiber, and a striking visual commission by artist Devin Troy Strother. Together with founder and publisher Michael Kusek, the curators are guiding a new approach to print: each issue guest-edited by a cultural leader and presented in collectible editions of different formats–softcover, hardcover, and a limited-quantity premium edition–with small-batch luxury cannabis accessories created with direction from the corresponding guest editor.
Pre-orders for the first issue of Different Leaf’s new series open this summer, with contributors, programming, and products to be announced at that time. For more information on Different Leaf visit the newly designed website at differentleaf.com and follow @differentleaf.
