Founding Editor and Designer Pass the Torch
High Desert Journal was founded ten years ago by Elizabeth Quinn whose vision was “to create a platform for the artists and writers of the interior West, a place to showcase their talents, and by doing so bring to a wider audience the art and stories that come from the place they call home.” And the first eighteen issues (the journal is now on issue 19) were all designed by Thomas Osborne. Editor Charles Finn writes, “There is not a better looking, classier, more visually engaging literary magazine on the stands today. Period. Thomas put a look to Elizabeth’s vision, and between the two they created one of the most respected journals in the country.” And due to the many thanks that Finn has to these to for making the journal what it is, it is with a heavy heart that he announces that both of them will no longer be working with the journal on the day-to-day. They will remain, however, as advisors.
And the torch of a vision will be carried on: “High Desert journal can’t help but change, evolve as all endeavors such as this do, but I’d like to take this opportunity to say what it will not do is cease to be the visual and artistic voice Elizabeth and Thomas foresaw, a journal built to be a witness to the West,” Finn writes.
To carry on this vision, Sheryl Noethe, previous poet laureate of Montana, and Joe Wilkins, award-winning author of The Mountains and the Fathers, will join the team along with new Art Editor Kerrie Rosenstein and new Fiction Editor Jane Carpenter. The new design team will consist of Benjamin Kinzer and Chloe Frommer.
