Dear Reader,
With this, our thirteenth issue, we've reached our one-year anniversary as a publication, and I'd like to take the opportunity to thank some of the people who've made this last year possible.
Conservatively estimating, we've published just over two hundred pieces of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, novel excerpts, and book reviews over the past year, by a variety of established and emerging writers who we believe are among the most exciting and interesting writers working today. While every contribution is one I personally treasure and feel incredibly grateful for having been able to publish, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank a smaller group of writers who have appeared several times over the past year, often in multiple genres, often with both creative and critical work. So thank you to Gabriel Blackwell, Jonathan Callahan, Darby M. Dixon III, Adam Gallari, Lily Hoang, Charles Jensen, Ethan Joella, Norman Lock, Josh Maday, John Madera, Jill Meyers, Stacy Muszynski, Dawn Raffel, Jim Ruland, Keith Taylor, and J.A. Tyler, all of whom have graced at least two issues of The Collagist over the past year. I'd especially like to thank Anna Clark, whose video book reviews have been a crowd-favorite since our first issue, and have appeared in twelve of our first thirteen issues. Thanks so much to these people and to all the rest of our contributors, who together make our magazine what it is.
I'd also like to thank the staff members who have worked with me for some portion of this past year, including Liana Imam, Tyler Gobble, Matthew Olzmann, Marie Schutt, and Lauren Walbridge, as well as designer Steven Seighman and copyeditor Mary Gillis, who do a lot of the behind-the-scenes work of making the magazine run.
Thanks again, to everyone mentioned above, and to anyone I've accidentally omitted. Also, thank you to all of our readers, who make all of this worth doing—Thank you for coming back month after month, and for your help spreading the word over the past year.
In this issue, we have fiction by Andrea Kneeland, Mary Miller, Alec Niedenthal, and Joseph Scapallato, as well as novel excerpts from Danielle Dutton's Sprawl(out this month from Siglio Press) and Adam Novy's The Avian Gospels (also out this month, from Hobart's Short Flight/Long Drive imprint).
In poetry, we have new work from Steve Orlen, Lisa Russ Spaar, Brynn Saito, and Steven D. Schroeder.
In non-fiction, we have the first two finalists from our 2010 Non-Fiction Contest, "Coal Hollow Ekphrasis" by Floyd Cheung and "Light" by Michael Palmer. (The final two pieces selected for publication from the contest will appear in our September issue.)
Finally, we have book reviews of Joshua Mohr's Termite Parade, Alejandro Zambra's The Private Lives of Trees, Aaron Michael Morales' Drowning Tucson, John Cotter's Under the Small Lights, and Lydia Millet's Love in Infant Monkeys.
As always, thanks to all of our contributors for letting us publish their fine work. Thanks also to everyone who reads the magazine, everyone who sends us submissions, and of course everyone who takes the time to post about the issue to their blogs, Facebook, or anywhere else. We appreciate your time and talents, and can't thank you enough for sharing them with us.
Sincerely,
Matt Bell
Editor
The Collagist