EDITORIAL REMARKS by M.R. Thomas
THIS IS THE TWELFTH YEAR and twenty-fifth issue of Slush Pile Magazine.
I feel tempted to go back over each of the previous two dozen issues to give a full account of all the extraordinary things our contributors have done since their work appeared in these pages, but there simply wouldn’t be space. They have published novels, won awards, signed film deals. They are gifted. And that, of course, was and is the whole point: to find and champion important work.
I feel proud of what we’ve done here, and of the community we’ve built.
But I’m also aware of how much more we could have done if we’d had the time and money to do it. The hope at the outset was always to scale up. Instead, we only ever could scale back, and then back again. And now we find ourselves with more demands on our time than we can keep up with. We can’t scale back any further.
And so, it is time to bid this beautiful project adieu.
Fittingly, many of the pieces in this issue have an elegiac feel. Some, like Vikram Kapur’s “A Temporary Arrangement,” Epiphany Ferrell’s “Absent Minded,” and Aidan Lee’s “3 Hungry Days for Deliveryman Stuck in Elevator,” explore different kinds of purgatory. Travis Helms’ “A / BRIDGE / MENT,” Shannon Bowring’s “Dead Monarchs,” and Molly Fuller’s “This Resembles a Funeral Ritual,” consider death and other transformations. Other pieces — ”Gardenias” by Tom Laichas and “Rebirth on the Hinterland Road” by Bethan Tyler — deal with hauntings and nostalgia. I’ll let you decide where DS Maolalai’s “The Crabshell” lands on this thematic spectrum.
The remaining four poems by Rebecca Bridge and “Catkin” by Lois Marie Harrod are delightfully off theme, but they do create a nice segue into the whimsical otherworldly work of featured artist Jenny Brown. I found her artistic journey and process as fascinating as her work; I hope you will, too.
Thanks to all of the writers who’ve trusted us with their work over the years, and thanks to all of the people who volunteered time and energy to make this publication possible. Thanks to the editorial staffs of literary publications everywhere — you do good, important, necessary work.
Last but certainly not least, thank you, reader, for sharing our passion for a good story.
— M. Rachel Thomas