LETTER FROM THE EDITOR v4.1
by Carter Maddox
WORDS WORK HAS A NEW FACE.
Our old platform, Tumblr, just didn't cut it. So, welcome to the first issue of Words Work on our new site (with our own URL!). It's rather large, so sink into your sofa, dig around through our archives, and stay for a while. There's plenty here to keep you busy for a night.
That being said, I hope all readers notice that quite a few of the writers and artists we're featuring in this issue are people we have published before--see Andrew Freiman, Lindsey Goldstein, Christian Wallace, Ashley Martinez. A skeptic might say we have a bias toward these creators (not true--our section editors read every submission blindly, unaware of whom the writer/artist is), or that we receive so few submissions it's hard not to choose some of the same people repeatedly (definitely not true--have you seen my inbox?). Neither of these scenarios is the case. These people are true creative heavyweights who impress us again and again with their urgency, honesty and sense of play with craft, and we are proud to feature an ever-growing collection of their work.
In this issue's fiction, we're serving a daughter coping with her father's absurd death-by-elephant-ass, a traveling salesman who compulsively picks up sad women from the different cities he visits, a family's collapse after their daughter is viciously attacked but refuses help, and a horrifying tale of war and necklaces strung with dismembered human feet. In poetry, anticipate an incredibly emotional (I cried--and I'm almost crying again just thinking of it!) series about an Egyptian-American family whose son visits the homeland for the first time during the Tahrir Square riots, an ode to Texas matriarchs, and a little jazz. Of course, we're also serving non-fiction. And visual art. And, for the first time ever, multimedia humuments.
I enjoy the hell out of every single piece we're publishing.
We hope you do, too.
Our old platform, Tumblr, just didn't cut it. So, welcome to the first issue of Words Work on our new site (with our own URL!). It's rather large, so sink into your sofa, dig around through our archives, and stay for a while. There's plenty here to keep you busy for a night.
That being said, I hope all readers notice that quite a few of the writers and artists we're featuring in this issue are people we have published before--see Andrew Freiman, Lindsey Goldstein, Christian Wallace, Ashley Martinez. A skeptic might say we have a bias toward these creators (not true--our section editors read every submission blindly, unaware of whom the writer/artist is), or that we receive so few submissions it's hard not to choose some of the same people repeatedly (definitely not true--have you seen my inbox?). Neither of these scenarios is the case. These people are true creative heavyweights who impress us again and again with their urgency, honesty and sense of play with craft, and we are proud to feature an ever-growing collection of their work.
In this issue's fiction, we're serving a daughter coping with her father's absurd death-by-elephant-ass, a traveling salesman who compulsively picks up sad women from the different cities he visits, a family's collapse after their daughter is viciously attacked but refuses help, and a horrifying tale of war and necklaces strung with dismembered human feet. In poetry, anticipate an incredibly emotional (I cried--and I'm almost crying again just thinking of it!) series about an Egyptian-American family whose son visits the homeland for the first time during the Tahrir Square riots, an ode to Texas matriarchs, and a little jazz. Of course, we're also serving non-fiction. And visual art. And, for the first time ever, multimedia humuments.
I enjoy the hell out of every single piece we're publishing.
We hope you do, too.