Happy June! Our summer issue is ready for you to enjoy! I’m so taken with the way these pieces seem to want to speak with each other across the issue. I hope you’ll take delight in these conjunctions and conversations too.
Issue 31 features creative work by Christopher Todd Anderson, Ace Boggess, Allisa Cherry, Genevieve Creedon, Patricia Davis-Muffett, Shannon Deep, Terri-Jane Dow, Laurie Filipelli, Marcene Gandolfo, Ben Groner III, Nicole Hart, Mary Crockett Hill, Jen Karetnick, Jill Kitchen, Sam Moe, Matthew Murrey, Emily Patterson, Jennifer Pons, Susan Trofimow, Jessica L. Walsh, Jessica Whipple, and Ava Ye.
The pedagogy papers in this issue are a special treat: a thorough lesson in contract grading (with links to bonus materials!) from Beverly Army Williams, a group villanelle exercise from Melissa Fite Johnson, and instructions for setting up an afterschool elementary poetry club from Vicky MacDonald Harris.
In the reviews section, Sarah Carey and Donna Vorreyer take us inside recent poetry collections by J.C. Reilly and Fox Henry Frazier, and Brendan Walsh tells us about the new Dolly Parton poetry anthology from editors Julie E. Bloemeke and Dustin Brookshire. We’ve also got some incredible interviews with Jared Singer, Audrey Burges, and Shahé Mankerian thanks to the brilliant work of Shai Afsai, Jennifer Fliss, and Yasmin Mariam Kloth.
I don’t usually mention the cover, but here at the end of our eighth year, I’ll note that my spouse and I have taken all of the photos for the covers so far. I love this one that I took a few months ago from my college campus. I rushed out of my department’s ocean-view meeting room (the meeting hadn’t started yet) to stand on the balcony and get a clear shot of the rainbow on the water. Kermit wasn’t wrong; it felt like magic.
We hope you’ll enjoy the magic of this issue as much as we do. Please find a contributor (or more than one!) with a Tip the Author link below their bio and make their day. Thanks for reading!
Katie Manning
Editor-in-Chief