Nonfiction Issue #4: Hope March 31st, 2020 March 31st, 2020 Letter from the Nonfiction Editor: The Art of Hope by Grace Jasmine his has been a strange winter. Things that I have always thought unimaginable happened—things that would be considered terrible by most of us. What started out as an amazing holiday season full of personal triumph quickly morphed into a surreal sort of madness. I was asked to be an adjunct professor speaking on musical theatre ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #4: Hope March 31st, 2020 March 31st, 2020 Letter from the Poetry Editor: Timeworn Challenges, Timeless Remedy by Steve Granzyk Reading the entries for this issue, roughly half for the mental health contest and half for this issue’s theme of Hope, followed shortly by the emergence of the COVID-19 virus, might seem to some a daunting challenge. As always, the rewards of hearing so many authentic voices more than compensated. At some point, though, I ...
Read MoreEditorial Issue #3: Pain Continued December 31st, 2019 December 31st, 2019 Letter from the Editor: We Will Not Quit by Tracy Granzyk hen I met patient advocate Helen Haskell in 2007, I was a writer working with a production team late into the night on the Tears to Transparency educational documentary film The Lewis Blackman Story. Lewis was, is, Helen’s son who will forever be 15 years old. I had a day job on the business side ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #3: Pain Continued December 31st, 2019 December 31st, 2019 Letter from the Nonfiction Editor: Compassion and Pain by Grace Jasmine ecember is a time we all take a moment to celebrate our families, our friends, and our good fortune. We celebrate by not only giving gifts, but also by sharing our love and good cheer with those we see each day. It is an amazing time of year. And in spite of those holiday hassles and ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #3: Pain Continued December 31st, 2019 December 31st, 2019 Letter from the Poetry Editor: Commonality and Difference by Steve Granzyk he development of a body of scientific knowledge about disease and illness necessarily identifies commonality—both of etiology and of remedies—yet healthcare itself must be sensitive to individuals and their specific circumstances. So too in the arts—in poetry—writers have learned from established practices of the past, and forms such as the sonnet, the villanelle, or the ...
Read MoreFiction Issue #3: Pain Continued December 31st, 2019 December 31st, 2019 Letter from the Fiction Editor: Shared Experiences by AM Larks was 11 years old when my aunt, who was 32 at the time, was diagnosed with brain cancer. It was the afternoon, a few hours before her rehearsal dinner, and the day before her wedding to her high-school sweetheart. I was playing in a big white tent, chasing my two-year-old brother underneath the tables and ...
Read MoreFiction Issue #2: Pain September 19th, 2019 September 19th, 2019 Letter from the Fiction Editor: Art and the Universality of Pain by AM Larks “Pain doesn’t have a face and pain doesn’t have a certain way of adjusting. Pain is universal.” —Aunjanue Ellis While everyone else was still sleeping off the revelry that accompanied the last days of 2008, I was at the Getty with my future husband. I walked through the exhibits more quickly than Mark, who ...
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