Essential East and West Coast Writing
The Malahat Review, a west coast Canadian lit mag, and The Fiddlehead, Atantic Canada’s International Literary Journal, collaborate on their autumn issues to create two unique and complimentary collections. The Malahat Review‘s issue is titled “Essential East Coast Writing” while The Fiddlehead‘s is “Essential West Coast Writing.”
The work inside comes from writers with strong connections to the regions. The editors say, “The poems, short stories, essays, interviews, and reviews they have published in these issues don’t necessarily betray an affiliation to any particular ‘regional’ theme, focus, or aesthetic. However, we believe that ‘sense of place’—and a sense of the lives lived on either coast—does ‘issue’ from a reading and appreciation of each magazine’s take on the other’s region.”
And this was no easy task; the editors have been hard at work planning this venture for two years. And although the issues are now out and being distributed, they aren’t going back to their own corners of the country; they have a special blog dedicated entirely to this project. They hope it will spark dialogue and communication about what differs between east and west coast writing—and what unites it.
