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Volume 30, Issue 1 (2016)

Letter from the Editor

Reader,

I have learned a lot from editing the review this fall, but I think now more than ever I appreciate the voice. Not one singular voice, not only those I agree with, but the abstract voice — that narrator, that imagined author, the person who reads aloud to me in my head — because it has an important power. It has shown me things that I cannot see from my perspective, and I have been caught selfish, guilty, and wrong by this voice. It has made me a better human.

I chose to place "Black & Unarmed" on the first page of this collection — not the first page of the poetry section, not the first page after the table of contents, but the first page — because I believe we collectively need to listen to this voice, give it the time you give to your phone when you first wake up, to the ingredients list on the cereal box, to the expiration date of your milk.

Listening is not listening anymore. It has become strangely conflated with hearing, with an involuntary notice of a sound. Listening, in the way I ask you to listen, involves more than hearing and understanding the words, and understanding what they mean. To listen is to give your time, your eyes, your still hands holding the page, or rested gently in your lap. It is treating the voice as the only object in the room for some time. I have amazed myself by listening, and that is all I ask of anyone.

Art

 

Untitled
Courtenay Graham

 

Lumber Yard
Adam Rathbun

 

Lincoln Logs
Adam Rathbun

 

Broken Window
Zach Taylor

 

Nightmare Mask
Zach Taylor

 

Self Portrait No. 47
Erwin Brea

 

Space Oddity
Mi Lin

 

None
Xinxin Zhang

 

QR Woman
Panpan Deng

 

Untitled
Miao Xu

 

Skull
Kerrigan Clark

 

Untitled
Courtenay Graham

Fiction

 

Sunday Drive
Katelyn Rogers

 

A Setting Sun
Cy Stoltz

Non-Fiction

 

Consider the Willow
Rebecca Sellers

 

Patty's Showclub
Emily McCarter

Poetry

 

Black & Unarmed
Odessa Fernandes

 

Auf Wiedersehen
Carter Vance

 

To Eggs
Claudia Monnett

 

Reflection
Christine Beckmann

 

Marquitos
Leopoldo Burguete

 

Cold Feet
Casey Murray

Editors

Editor-in-Chief
Hayden DeBruler
Managing Editor
Mallory Hasty
Faculty Advisor
Joseph Heithaus
Design Editor
Brittany Buckner
Cover Art
Amber Calderon
Poetry Editor
Rachel Higson
Fiction Editor
Kate Emmert
Nonfiction Editor
Daniel Schultz
Art Editor
Ia Tserodze
Poetry Readers
Hannah Hearon
Ivaylo Pasev
Jacob Strauss
Matthew Curran
Holly Whistler
Art Readers
Sarah Butler
Emily McCarter
Byron Mason
Megan Haltom
Nonfiction Readers
Rachel May
Byron Mason
Fiction Readers
Lis Hawkins
Rebecca Sellers
Christine Beckmann
Kendyll Owens
Marissa Brown
Maria Mendez
Sarah Guendert