With grateful thanks for the patience of our readers and writers, we wanted to provide a cover reveal of our delayed Fall 2020 issue, freshly arrived from the printer yesterday. The pandemic shut down our physical office starting in March 2020 and contributed to delays in filling staff vacancies. But our remaining team kept going, even headquartered in their cars, even as children interrupted at home to ask for help with long division, or even as their own lives as students were being upturned.
The mission of a literary magazine, to hold a space for the voices of diverse writers to move and enlighten us, kept us going. The first words of the first piece in the issue, Melissa Range's poem "Fever Season"—"Work doesn't stop for blood / born to immunity..."—pull us into the 1853 Yellow Fever epidemic in New Orleans, but also address our current pandemic. The last piece in the issue, Gregg Williard's essay "Geek Duende, Blithe Dread," offers a tongue-in-cheek sector-based organizing scheme for book lovers that is timeless, but especially meaningful as we stare more than usual at the contents of our homes. Between, there's reality TV, jar-smashing, texting, empty nests, unrequited love, filmmaking, caregiving, outsider art, and more. We're glad to have each piece out in the world.
Subscriptions are now being mailed, and the issue is available for order on our webstore.
Socially-distant air hugs all around!
