Dear Reader,
Welcome to Issue Nine of The Collagist! I’m happy to announce that in celebration of National Poetry Month, we’ve got a special expanded poetry section this issue, thanks to the efforts of poetry editor Matthew Olzmann. In that section, you’ll find new poems by Tamiko Beyer, Denise Duhamel, Matt Hart, Nate Pritts, Alan Shapiro, Sarah Sweeney, and C. Dale Young, whose work I’ll hope you’ll enjoy as much as we have.
In our book review section, you’ll also find four reviews of new books of poetry, each covered by another poet. The books covered are I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl by Karyna McGlynn, Rock Vein Sky, by Charlotte Mandel, Deconstruction Myth by Mathias Svalina, and Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty by Tony Hoagland, plus a video review of a new novel, The Old Garden by Hwang Sok-yong.
While we have our eye on The Collagist’s poetry section, I’d like to take a moment to again thank Matthew Olzmann for serving as poetry editor of The Collagist. He generously reads hundreds of submissions to find the few we publish in each issue, and his comments and insights about the poems he selects have taught me as much about poetry as anyone else ever has. I’m very happy to get to work with such a tireless advocate of the genre, especially one with his fresh eye for finding the very best out of what gets sent our way. The Collagist wouldn’t be the same without him, and I hope that if you enjoy the poetry we publish, you’ll find the chance to tell him so.
On top of all that poetry, we’ve got plenty of new prose as well, including an excerpt from the new novel Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles, written by Kira Henehan and forthcoming next month from Milkweed. You’ll also find new fiction by Norman Lock, Darby Larson, Jac Jemc, and Trent England, as well as a personal essay from Renée E. D’Aoust.
Don’t forget to get your entries in this month for the 2010 Collagist Non-Fiction Contest, judged by David McLendon, editor of the literary magazine Unsaid and a former Collagist contributor whose essay “Twisting the Story Into Its Original Twisted Form” appeared in our first issue. Prize money starts at $100 and then climbs upward based on the number of entries received, and the winner (and possibly some finalists) will also be published in our June issue. Please visit the contest page for full details and to enter.
Thanks also to everyone who came and visited us at AWP this past week during the book fair or who attended our shared reading with Barrelhouse, Hobart, and Soft Skull Press. Our time at the book fair was a blast, and we were so lucky to hear all the readers at our event, including our own contributor M.T. Fallon, whose story “The Hunger Artist” appeared in our February 2010 issue.
One final announcement: Officially starting with this issue, our former interns Liana Imam and Marie Schutt have taken over as the blog editors for The Collagist, organizing all the interviews and other blog content that support our issues. They’ve been working on the blog for some time now, and it’s become clear that I was getting in their way rather than facilitating their talents. I hope you’ll continue to stop by the blog and read the near-daily content they’re producing there, and that you’ll feel free to join in the conversation there by asking questions or making comments of your own.
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 really appreciate your time and talents, and can't thank you enough for sharing them with us.
Sincerely,
Matt Bell
Editor
The Collagist