I don’t think I could say “It’s been a wild year” enough times to encapsulate the upheaval I and many others have felt in the past year. But reading the many submissions we received was definitely one of the bright spots. We received soooo many awesome pieces and there were too many pieces that we liked too much to let go, but our self-assigned limit of pieces stood in the way—our cup overfloweth. So, we’ve decided to do something different—a special Spring Annual issue! Will it be an every year thing? We’re not sure! I think it would be a nice Spring issue but we’ll see. The biggest change is that instead of just 15 pieces and a feature, we’re publishing 3-issues worth of pieces. That’s right, bigger than the inaugural double issue even! Everything is short (I think the longest piece is a little over 500 words) and it was a fun challenge to craft the order of this mega-issue into a satisfying ‘experience’. But I think reading it in order will bring you through multiple arcs and styles in a really enjoyable way. I’ve also not distinguished between prose and poetry in this issue—many pieces straddle the line and why put them in boxes? Everything is poetic, it all tells us a story in some fashion—I hope you enjoy this ‘mixtape’ of an Annual Issue.
Zebulon Huset