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For the cover of this ninety-eighth issue, we feature Isaac Julien’s Serenade, a photographic still from his multi-screen film installation, Lessons of the Hour. Julien takes inspiration from Fredrick Douglass’ abolitionist speeches; curator Alice Gray Stites’ essay illuminates how Julien’s work speaks to historic as well as contemporary struggles for justice.
We open with poems from the finalists of the Frederick Smock Poetry Prize, our new triennial contest for Kentucky-affiliated poets, selected by Kentucky Poet Laureate Emeritus Richard Taylor. You’ll find a range of voices here—engaging place, the body and disability, the lives of mothers and daughters, the pleasures and shortfalls of language, and more—all connected in some way to the commonwealth. The winning collection, Ellen Elder’s We Left a Window Open to the Sea, will be available this fall from Fleur-de-Lis Press.
Our poetry section showcases the aesthetic diversity of American poetry as well as work from Chinese, Iranian, and Palestinian poets; Guest Poetry Editor Jeffrey Skinner shares his thoughts on the selection process in his essay “Poetry, Inexhaustible.” Historian E. Rae Ferguson’s essay “Of Cats and Garbage” narrates the writer’s childhood move from Germany, where her father was stationed with the US Army, back to the States where she encountered both the injustices of the Jim Crow South and the joys of Black city life in Baltimore.
In fiction, you’ll find stories framed in terms of human tensions: between the desire for comfort and the need for solitude after shattering loss in C. Lee Brady’s “My Weight in Stone,” between the desire for connection and the threat of violence in Ryan White’s “Wolves of Tonasket,” or between the demands of religious obedience and irrepressible curiosity in Ruth Rouff’s “Fossil Park.” The ever- changing roles of family also come into play. In Herb Zarov’s “The Shemira,” adult siblings hold a traditional Jewish ceremony in the aftermath of their mother’s death and reevaluate long-held certainties about one another. In Kathy Nicarry’s “Mom’s Rolls,” a woman seeks joy in connection with her mother even as they speed towards the cliff- edge of her mother’s deepening dementia.
With this issue we welcome new contributors SeyyedArmin Aghili, John Brooks, Jessica Farquhar, Melissa Jørgenrud Helton, James Kimbrell, Eva Kramer, winner of the Annette Allen Poetry Prize, judged by Julia Johnson, Nathaniel Lachenmeyer, Daniel Lawless, Kristi Maxwell, John A. Nieves, Kiki Petrosino, Lyn Slaughter, Ann Townsend, and many others, who join returning contributors Virginia Lee Alcott, Karen George, Juan Pablo Mobili, Merle L. Bachman, reviewing Dale Going’s poetry collection, The Beautiful language of Our Disaster, and Jeanie Thompson, reviewing David Baker’s fourteenth collection of poems, Transit.
Founding Editor: Sena Jeter Naslund
Editor and Executive Director: Flora K. Schildknecht
Associate Editor: Robin Lippincott
Assistant Editor: Jonathan Weinert
Guest Poetry Editor: Jeffrey Skinner
Guest Fiction Editor: Jody Lisberger
Cornerstone Editor: Betsy Woods
Director of Operations: Ron Schildknecht
University of Louisville Intern: Norah Langford
Bellarmine University Student Ambassador: Grace M. Long
Editor and Executive Director: Flora K. Schildknecht
Associate Editor: Robin Lippincott
Assistant Editor: Jonathan Weinert
Guest Poetry Editor: Jeffrey Skinner
Guest Fiction Editor: Jody Lisberger
Cornerstone Editor: Betsy Woods
Director of Operations: Ron Schildknecht
University of Louisville Intern: Norah Langford
Bellarmine University Student Ambassador: Grace M. Long
