In his “Front Matter” editor’s note to the July/August 2019 issue of Kenyon Review, David H. Lynn announces his intention to step down from his role as The David F. Banks Editor of the publication:

“. . . about a year from when this issue arrives off the press, I’ll be stepping down as editor. The decision came to me rather suddenly, I confess, and several years earlier than I’d previously imagined. What had long seemed a comfortable bike ride, despite occasional potholes and sudden challenging hills that maintained my interest and attention, was now unexpectedly weighing in my legs and on my shoulders. I was growing a bit weary and impatient for other vistas, other challenges.”

In discussing the role and responsibilities of editor, Lynn responds to the label of gatekeeper :

“It’s hostile and resentful, suggesting that the role of literary editors is to maintain high barriers. With all my heart, however, I believe that the appropriate charge for an editor of the Kenyon Review is to resist any such notion of guardianship, of excluding any class or set of writers. Rather, whoever is appointed to follow me, she or he or they, should continue to seek to include, to aggressively search out new voices and new talents and even new media with which to publish them, while also nourishing and supporting many of those talented authors we have discovered and honored for the past two decades and more.”

We wish Lynn a smooth transition away from his wonderful work with Kenyon Review – may he indeed be met by beautiful vistas and invigorating challenges.

Crazyhorse Fiction Editor Anthony Varallo’s Editor’s Note to the Spring 2019 issue couldn’t be more timely. In it, he recounts a conversation with a colleague asking, “What do you do with all your books?”

A conundrum for most NewPages readers, no doubt, since being book people still means holding onto physical copies of books, no matter how many e-versions we could be reading also/instead.

I once envisioned the perfect adulthood as being one surrounded by books. I guess I also should have envisioned the time to read them all! Much like the Twilight Episode, Time Enough At Last, we here at NewPages find ourselves surrounded by books and literary journals with barely enough time to glance the covers and contents before another batch arrives in the mail.

We do make time, however, to read, to write reviews, to appreciate others’ reviews, and keep up with the literary world in general. Still – here are all these physical books.

Varallo [pictured] writes, “For many years, I acquired books with the idea that I was building a library. A library that would give me pleasure for years, I’d hoped, or a library that might be useful to others . . . “

We had also held such visions at one time, purchasing a dozen or so quality bookcases and having some built in. They quickly filled the office and spilled into numerous rooms in our home. And who read them? Did we have time? Did they even “look good” ? As Varallo comments, “I tell my colleague about the tower of books on my nightstand, the one that stretches higher than my lamp. I describe the books stacked horizontally on my bookshelves, not in the artful, decorative style you sometimes see in glossy magazines; these are stacks of pure necessity. Books piled on top of other books, sometimes bending the covers of the books beneath them.”

This is the reality of ‘too many books.’ Yes, there is such a thing as too many books. And the truth of the matter in our case is, they should be freed onto others so that they can be read.

We cleared off the bookshelves in the office. Cleared out almost every bookcase in the house. We boxed up books and magazines and donated them to various libraries, colleges, universities and K-12 classrooms in our area and a bit beyond (Hello Alaska friends!). After this initial clearing out, we are still met with a steady stream of books and lit mags that come through. It is our work, after all.

What to do with them? We have a plan hatching and look forward to sharing it with you later this summer. In the meantime, What do you do with all your books?

Wish I could have been at this party: Ciclops Cyderie and Brewery in Spartanburg, SC created a beer release of “Sense and Sprucability – A Writer’s Tale,” based on a recipe by home brewer Jane Austen to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Converse College Low-Residency MFA. At the same event, South 85 Journal, the semi-annual online literary journal published by the MFA program, welcomed Lisa Hase-Jackson [pictured] as their new Managing Editor. Hase-Jackson is herself a published poet and served as Review Editor of 85 South Journal  in the past. Read more about the upcoming change here.

Bending Genres online literary journal offers monthly online weekend genre workshops. For $111 each, writers can sign up for “Mutate Through the Five Elements: Flash Your Fleshy Pearls” July 12- 14 with Meg Tuite, “Opening the Back Door: Absurdism as a Way to Truth” August 23 – 25 with Nancy Stohlman [pictured], and “Human Typography: Sculpting Surprising, Broken – and Real – Characters for More Compelling Stories” September 20 – 22 with Robert Russell. For more information about each workshop and registration, click here.

Published by the Black Earth Institute, dedicated to re-forging the links between art, spirit, and society, the May 2019 issue of About Place is themed “Dignity As An Endangered Species.”

Issue Editor Pamela Uschuk notes that the editors “chose work that addressed the question, what is dignity?” from the starting point that “dignity is endangered during these times.” Assistant Editor CMarie Fuhrman asserts, “It is necessary that we begin to define, for ourselves and as a Nation, that which makes us human, humane.” And Assistant Editor Maggie Miller explores the concept of dignity and closes her preface: “With chin up, shoulders back, we too go forward – with dignity given not  taken away.”

Contributors to the issue include Rita Dove, Joy Harjo, Jacqueline Johnson, Patricia Spears Jones, Fenton Johnson, Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, Linda Weasel Head, Kelle Groom, Maria Melendez Kelson, Cornelius Eady, Sagirah Shahid, Inés Hernández-Ávila, Gerald L. Coleman, K.LEE, K. Eltinaé, and Kimberly Blaeser.

Submissions for the next issue of About Place Journal are being accepted until August 1, 2019 on the theme: “Infinite Country: Deepening Our Connection to Place, Culture and One Another.” Editor Austin Smith and Assistant Editors Taylor Brorby and  Brenna Cussen Anglada.

The editors of Frontier Poetry, in keeping with their mission “to provide practical help for serious writers,” especially emerging poets, has a series of interviews – Editors Talk Poetry Acceptances – with “great editors from around the literary community.” Frontier Poetry asks for “frank thoughts on why poems may get accepted/rejected from their own slush pile of submissions, and what poets can do to better their chances.”

Adding an interview almost every month, Frontier Poetry has so far interviewed Kristin George Bagdanov of Ruminate Magazine, Rick Barot of New England Review, Chelene Knight of Room, Esther Vincent [pictured] of The Tiger Moth Review, Talin Tahajian of Adroit Journal, J.P. Dancing Bear of Verse Daily, Gabrielle Bates of Seattle Review, Melissa Crowe of Beloit Poetry Journal, Marion Wrenn of Painted Bride Quarterly, Hannah Aizenman of The New Yorker, Anthony Frame of Glass Poetry, Luther Hughes of The Shade Journal, Don Share of Poetry, Sumita Chakraborty of Agni, Jessica Faust of The Southern Review, and Kwame Dawes of Prairie Schooner.

The basic stories in much of our canon of literature are hardly subtle. Their power and wisdom come from the discoveries about human nature and behavior through characters and their struggles. Beware of pride-bound, stubborn, pigheaded leaders—yes and beware of the idea that the themes of classic literature are “irrelevant” today. The resiliency of literature comes also in the clear and perfect expression of the moments and moods of life through language, many examples of which cannot be forgotten—Hamlet with the skull of his jester, Keats and his nightingale, or the sheer poignancy of Nick Carroway at the end of Daisy’s dock, looking out on the green light, thinking “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Speer Morgan, “Collisions,” The Missouri Review, Spring 2019

The Courtship of Winds each issue asks five questions of writers whose work has previously appeared in the online publication. The Winter 2019 Digital Forum invited Perle Besserman [pictured], Sandra Kohler, Denise Kline, and Jennifer Page to respond to questions to discuss how they see the #MeToo movement now – post initial profound effect, post backlash, post Kavanaugh hearings, and post Christine Blasey Ford testimony.

The writers each responded to five questions posed by the editors, including the Kavanaugh hearings, Trump’s mocking Al Franken’s stepping down, “utilitarian calculus” as addressed by Sonia Sadha, the impact of movements like this, and any inherent ‘dangers’ for men and women in our current climate of accusations and speaking up.

“In my view, writing, at least literary writing, is not just a matter of inventing out of whole cloth or drawing on things we remember, but also of accessing sought-for words and connections. Do we, when we’re writing, reach in  to actively find the parts of our next sentences, or are those ‘given’ to us? It often feels like the latter, which naturally makes me wonder through what agency. As Joseph Brodsky wrote somewhere, life is a gift, and where there is a gift there must be a giver.”

Sven Birkerts, “Losing, Finding, Improvising,” Agni 89

Creative Nonfiction invites writers to follow @cnfonline on Twitter, then tell a true story in the length of a tweet with #cnftweet to have that writing considered for publication in the “Tiny Truths” section of the print magazine.

The Spring 2019 issue includes fourteen tiny essays on a range of topics including ‘caregiving for a parent with dementia’ (ChrisGNguyen), finding a single cigarette butt in the driveway every day (GitaCBrown), a family’s welcome back “as if no time had passed” (MPMcCune2), going home “in my dreams” (sevans_writer), ‘a musician explaining his song title’ (ZippyZey aka Karen Zey – pictured), doing the hokey pokey so as not to look a fool (by ridiculoustimes) and memories stirred by listening to the news (mjlevan).

Cave Wall 15 includes a focus on revision. The ‘artwork’ for this issue consists of fifteen early draft images of some of the poems included. The cover art is actually Emma Bolden’s draft of “Easter Sunday.” Other authors whose drafts are included: Matthew Thorburn, Billy Reynolds, Chelsea Wagenaar, Jessica Cuello, Peter Kline, and Molly Spencer.

In addition, Cave Wall interviewed poets from this issue about their revision process and published those as a PDF on their website. Poets interviewed include Kasey Jueds, Matthew Thorburn, Tori Reynolds, Emma Bolden, Christopher Buckley, Molly Spencer, Billy Reynolds, Peter Kline, Carrie Green, Elizabeth Breese, John Sibley Williams, Chelsea Wagenaar, Lola Haskins, and Celisa Steele.

This issue combined with these Q&As would make an excellent teaching resource!

In his Spring 2019 “Welcome Readers” section, founder and editor M. Scott Douglass explains his plan to “retire from editing” Main Street Rag.

In making such a proclamation, Douglass comments, “the assumption is that you (I) are/am going out of business. That’s not the plan.” Having already sold off the production equipment for the publishing arm of MSR, Douglass is moving to the next step: “find a suitable replacement to edit the journal (and possibly books). I’d like to be able to bring this person along slowly, train them in the use of software, deadlines, scheduling, etc., but as soon as you hang a sign that says, ‘Looking for new leadership,’ again, everyone thinks you’re on your deathbed and avoids you.”

“We’re not dying. I’m not dying. We have no debt, so we’re not in financial difficulty.” Instead, Douglass notes, after nearly twenty-five years, it’s just time for him to focus on his own “muse” and get out from behind the desk to travel more.

“So, if you know someone looking to take over a literary house who’s willing to put in some training time, send them my way. There may be a place for them here.”

 

In 2016, Peter Stitt, founding editor of The Gettysburg Review, retired as editor-in-chief and Mark Drew stepped into the role. In May 2018, Stitt passed away at age 77.

The Winter 2018 issue features a tribute to Stitt, with contributions from Floyd Collins, Sidney Wade, Philip Schultz, Linda Pastan, Albert Goldbarth, Christopher Howell, Hope Maxwell Snyder, Michael Waters, Rebecca McClanahan, and a closing poem by Peter Stitt, “Winter Search.”

Kenyon Review Editor David Baker opens the May/June 2019 issue with his commentary on the annual “Nature’s Nature” theme. In response to our having witnessed “the Trump administration take further steps to release two hundred thousand more acres of public land—this time in Utah along the Canyonlands and the Green River—to ‘development,'” Baker notes that “Greed, stupidity, and fever for power are not new to our country or even our species—read Shakespeare, Dante, Homer—but the velocity of unfixable damages and the extent of losses are without precedent.”

Baker asks, “Are we one or two generations away from the point of no return for environmental stability? Is ours the last generation with hope of preventing or slowing a massive disaster? Is it too late? The calculations come every week, with variables, but the constant alarm is the same.”

This is what compelled him, he recounts, “to curate a special feature on ecology and poetry . . . I wanted to showcase new poems that resisted such forms of power and that named one by one the spectacular, beautiful, and often endangered citizens of the natural world.”

Now an annual issue, the writers featured each year are purposefully diverse in that the publication does not choose the same authors to appear more than once. The compilation features twenty-seven new poems, one essay, and two portfolios of artwork. For a full list of content with some selections available to read online, visit the Kenyon Review.

Issue No. 17 of The Common includes a special portfolio of stories from Syria, with works by Luqman Derki (Trans. Jonathan Wright), Shahla Al-Ujayli (Trans. Alice Guthrie), Mohammad Ibrahim Nawaya (Trans. Robin Moger), Raw’a Sunbul (Trans. Alice Guthrie), Haidar Haidar (Trans. Jonathan Wright), Odai Al Zoubi (Trans. Robin Moger), Colette Bahna (Trans. Robin Moger), and Ibrahim Samuel (Trans. Maia Tabet), as well as artwork from Syria, courtesy of the Hindiyeh Museum of Art.

The Common website features full content online as well as a supercool interactive map [pictured] of the issue – click on the geographical marker and get a photo and link to the content.

For teachers: The Common offers supplementary teaching materials for each issue. A classroom subscription includes two issues for every student and an in-person or Skype visit from Editor in Chief Jennifer Acker or a participating author.

With its Spring 2019 issue, Raleigh Review celebrates nine years of continuous publication. As they head into their tenth year, Editor and Publisher Rob Greene notes, “we realized it was time to reward our staff members who do the work on the magazine, so in addition to increasing the amount we’re paying to our poets, writers, and visual artists by a third, we are finally beginning to take small strides to help reward our telecommuting and highly skilled editorial staff who are based throughout the country and at times the world.”

Congratulations to Raleigh Review for providing a venue for writers, artists, and readers – and sharing how important financial support and subscriptions are to our community!

Jason Splichal, Founder and Co-Editor-in-Chief of Sky Island Journal writes in his opening letter to Issue 7: “We are different from other literary journals in so many ways. While we appreciate and respect the paths that other publications have taken, it has been clear from the beginning that the path less taken will always be our path. The rugged independence and relentless tenacity required to stay on that path helps us to be mindful; every step we take should be made with kindness and humility. Reading and responding to every submission, then having the ability to share the work of writers from around the world with readers from around the world, are privileges beyond the telling. We’re so grateful for our contributors and our readers.”

Produced within the MFA at Eastern Washington University, Willow Springs literary magazine features writers from their current print issue online.

Featured from Willow Springs 83 are four poems by Maggie Smith (an interview with her is included in the print publication), “The Collector” by Suzanne Highland, “The Year We Lived” by Breanna Lemieux, and “Bless the Feral Hog” by Laura Van Prooyen.

With each feature, the author offers notes on the work as well as whatever random musings they might want to include under the fun title “Music, Food, Booze, Tattoos, Kittens. etc..”

In her responses, Suzanne Highland [pictured] shares, “I have two tattoos: one says ‘in medias res and the other says ‘(write it!).’ I’m wildly attached to both, but one would have to be to get tattoos like those in the first place, I think.”

Reflecting on Ruminate’s 50th Anniversary issue, Editor Brianna VanDyke writes that when Thích Nhất Hạnh was asked, “Is there a purpose for wearing the robe other than to clothe your body?” He replied, “To remind yourself that you are a monk.”

“I wonder,” VanDyke goes on, “if one day you or I might also be asked a question about reminding ourselves of who we are.” 

She goes on to explore what those ‘reminders of self’ might be, adding, “something about this dream I hold, that these pages continue to be a reminder for fifty more good issues, how the very best stories and art and poems remind us of who we are, why we matter, our longings, our deepest work this day.”

Hear, hear!

Editorial insights abound at the Colorado State University Center for Literary Publishing Editor’s Blog. Home of the Colorado Review as well as several esteemed annual literary prizes, Center Director Stephanie G’Schwind has both breadth and depth in her staff contributors.

Recent posts include:

“Looking toward Spring with Place-Based Writing” by Editorial Assistant Jennifer Anderson

“Revisiting the Holocaust Metaphors of Sylvia Plath” by Editorial Assistant Leila Einhorn

“Procedures for the Slowpoke Poet” by Associate Editor Susannah Lodge-Rigal

“On Love Poetry” by Associate Editor Daniel Schonning

The blog also features links to monthly podcasts: February 2019 Podcast: Writing on Mental Health with Margaret Browne; January 2019 Podcast: Horror Poetry with Emma Hyche; and more.

Check it out here. 

After announcing in November 2018 that he would be stepping down as editor of The Georgia Review, Stephen Corey offers readers an update on his departure in the Spring 2019 editorial: 

As I write now, during the middle days of February, hard upon our Spring 2019 deadline, the dice are still not fully cast for my successor or my exact departure date – and so I will be brief again: the earliest I would step away is 1 June, at which time our Summer 2019 issue will literally be in press and the preparation of the Fall 2019 contents will be in full swing, so my ghost will be around for at least some aspects of the latter. The goal for me, for the rest of the Georgia Review  staff, and for the University of Georgia, is a transition that will be as smooth as possible for our submitters, contributors, and readers.

I will close with a few words (because I have been asked for them) about the why  of my departure from the place of employment to which I have given more than half of my life, and which I have served through almost  (just one year shy of) half of the journal’s life. I’ve been pondering and preparing for a couple of years, with no pressure from anyone other than myself. I’m seventy, I’m healthy, I have several books of my own writing to finish and begin – and I haven’t even toured Great Britain yet, that realm so vital from early days to my being drawn into this literature/reading/writing/editing life.

To be continued…

S.C.

The Kenyon Review offers readers In Memoriam, “a space for remembering notable contributors to the pages of KR. We regret the loss of their voices from the world of arts and letters.”

In honor of W.S. Merwin, Kenyon Review  Poetry Editor David Baker writes, “No contemporary poet’s work has meant more to me than W. S. Merwin’s. We first met in 1979, when I was a twenty-four-year-old high school English teacher in Jefferson City, Missouri; we played pool at Dave’s Bar in Kansas City one night, and he told me I shouldn’t go do my PhD but stay out of academia and write.”

Read the rest of Baker’s comments here along with Merwin’s works published in KR and a link to video interview with KR editor David Lynn and David Baker upon Merwin’s accepting the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement in 2010.

Glimmer Train March 2019 Bulletin offers an interesting selection of craft essays, each just at a tipping point of controversy.

“Words, and Barry Hannah, the Guy Who Taught Me to Love Them” by Marian Palaia shares how Hannah’s voice and vernacular influenced her early on, although now she comments, “if Barry were writing the same stuff now, I can’t imagine how he’d get away with it.”

Devin Murphy’s “We All Do It! Don’t We? The Art of Reading Like a Thief” examines the fine line of “Did I plagiarize the novel I’d read?” He comments on his own teaching and trying to help student writers “understand the value of actively reading for material that will help them deepen their own stories.”

“What interests me about politics in fiction,” writes Siamak Vossoughi [pictured], “is how it informs the lives of characters.” In his essay, ‘The Political Lives of Characters,” he asserts, “A writer only runs the risk of being preachy or dogmatic if he or she makes a character of one political belief less three-dimensional and human than that of another.”

 

Subscribers to Rattle poetry magazine get bonus in their mailbox with each spring issue: Rattle Young Poets Anthology. If you’re not a subscriber, RYPA can be ordered separately for just $6.

The 2019 issue is a 48-page chapbook of work by twenty poets age fifteen or under, but don’t let the age line fool you. Rattle editors write that this “is not a collection just for kids—these are missives to adults from the next generation, confronting big topics with fresh eyes and a child-like spontaneity.”

Contributors include Lucia Baca, Angélica Borrego, Olivia Bourke, April Chukwueke, Lexi Duarte, Josephina Green, C.A. Harper, Lily Hicks, Angelique Jean Lindberg, Rylee McNiff, Ethan Paulk, Lydia Phelps, McKenzie Renfrew, Ellie Shumaker, Emmy Song, Rowan Stephenson, Saoirse Stice, Zachary Tsokos, Layla Varty, and Simon Zuckert, with cover art by Noralyn Lucero.

Submission deadline for the next issue is October 15, 2019.

Since there is always a lag time created between contemporary news issues and publications of poetry, Rattle has created a quick-streaming solution.

Poets Respond takes weekly submissions (before midnight on Fridays) for works “written within the last week about a public event that occurred within the last week.”

The poems then appear every Sunday on the Rattle homepage. The only criteria for the poem, the editors assert, is quality, “all opinions and reactions are welcome.”

Selected poets receive $50, with poems sent before midnight on Sunday and Tuesday considered for a “bonus” mid-week post.

This week’s selection is “In Defense of Those Who Harbor Terrible Ideas at Tax Time” by Alison Luterman [pictured], in which, yes, she considers “the young black gay actor who orchestrated / a fake hate crime against himself. / It must have seemed like such a good idea to him / at the time,” and later in the poem offers, “I have to forgive this young man his terrible / idea, I have to because, in my own way, I’ve been him.” 

For more information about Poets Respond and an archive of past works, click here.

“Oh, plastic, scourge of the Anthropocene, shaped into adorable shapes and dyed multifarious colors; plastic, who will be with us forever: it’s easy to forget about you, but when I remember you’re here, I’m annoyed and freaked out all at once.”

The opening line of From the Editor: Material Life by Anna Lena Phillips Bell creates a link between the theme for the Fall/Winter 2018 issue of Ecotone: Body and our cultural abuse of plastics. Taking their own use to task, Ecotone announces with this issue they will no longer be shipping the magazines in ‘polybags,’ and the cover of the publication itself will now be an uncoated stock. Walking the talk!

And the contents of the publication focus on “The Body” including campus-carry laws, Indigenous students, the safety of women’s bodies, queer identity, birth and postpartum depression, and much more.

See a full list of contributors and read partial content here.

“All of the work in this special Fall issue of Cold Mountain Review about a fair and just relationship between people and their society has great emotional impact,” writes Consulting Editor Vivian Shipley in her Editor’s Note. And the work strikes upon a variety of justice issues: the opioid crisis; transgender experience; the multitude of experiences of women from different identities, races, and classes; the continued impact of oppression created by colonial occupation; the impact of humans on the environment; ecological aspects; and the role of social media.

From her youth, Shipley shares, “I was taught that anything that had a negative impact on the dignity of life of any person, from their birth to their death, needed to be addressed and eliminated,” and concludes, “This timely and very significant issue of Cold Mountain Review explores many ways to achieve social justice in our currently bitterly divided country.”

See a complete list of contributors and read the full content online here.

Number 25 in the 2River Chapbook Series, Inscape, is a collection of poems by members of the Summer Poetry Workshop at the Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield, Vermont. Facilitator and retired English lit prof Bill Freedman introduces the collection, talking about the past four summers he has spent leading the poetry writing workshop, Poetry as Personal Expression.

“There is brotherhood here,” Freedman writes, “the camaraderie of proud men similarly confined, some insist unjustly, stripped of agency and entitlement, vulnerable to an array of humiliations, yet determined to make this time not a suspension of their lives, but, if possible, a useful and worthwhile part of it. Their writing, this workshop, is, I think, for many, an important part of that.”

As with all 2River Chapbooks, readers can find this fully available online, downloadable as a PDF, and in the form of “Chap the Book,” which provides a PDF download that can be printed and folded into a chapbook.

Throughout 2018, Basalt Magazine  “committed to publishing a selection of poems from each month of Ian Boyden’s manuscript A Forest of Names. Over the course of a year, Boyden translated the 5,196 names of schoolchildren crushed in the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake. He then began a collection of poems, each written on the day of each child’s birth. An in-depth discussion of these poems can be read in Fault Line: An Introduction to A Forest of Names.”

In his discussion, Boyden explains how, had it not been for Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, the names of these children, and the government being held accountable for the shoddy construction of the schools where these children were killed, would have been lost.

As part of the curation of Ai Weiwei’s work related to the earthquake, Ian Boyden papered a wall with the children’s names, “a massive work on paper consisting of 21 scrolls, together measuring 10.5′ by over 42′ long.”

Boyden then discusses his work, taking the name of each child, the Chinese characters, and translating these into poetic renderings: “Holding the hopes implicit in each of these names in tension with the tragedy of the children’s deaths has also been a translations of one grief to another: perhaps this is the most accurate translation of all.”

The newest issue of The Malahat Review (#205) features LGBTQ2S?+ writers in a celebration of “Queer Perspectives.” Featured authors include fiction by Nathan Caro Fréchette, Christine Higdon, Matthew J. Trafford; creative nonfiction by Darrel J. McLeod, Anaheed Saatchi, Neal Debreceni, Deborah VanSlet; poetry by A. Light Zachary, Arün Smith, Kayla Czaga, Adèle Barclay, Arleen Paré, Nisa Malli, Charlie C. Petch, Sun Rey, and gorgeous cover art by Kent Monkman.

Malahat Lite, the publication’s virtual newsletter, features interviews with Billeh Nickerson, who discusses his poem/lyric essay “Skies,” and Francesca Ekwuyasi, who talks about her story “Good Soil,” both pieces included in this issue.