What a wild couple years it’s been. Of course COVID-19 was the main thing which is ongoing, sadly, but beyond that—Coastal Shelf’s first contests were a wild success, bringing in far more submissions than we’d expected, and of a tremendous quality. So good, in fact, we rethought our publishing schedule entirely and added on a year-end ‘annual’ issue with far more pieces than our standard of 15 new pieces and a feature. There was too much that we didn’t want to let go, but didn’t quite fit in the quarterlies. Look for that at the end of December.
Beyond that, I got cold-called in July for a teaching position at a school that looked like exactly the type of public school I’ve long complained we didn’t have and felt like I had to put up or shut up. So after accepting the position I underwent a cross-country move in under a month, then embarked on a new field while trying to get this issue and contest in order, and trying to find somewhere to live. Again, it’s been a wild ride.
I would be remiss if I didn’t give George Kowalski a huge shout out for stepping up as Assistant Editor during the end of summer to do an enormous amount of reading/feedback writing to help us get our backlog of submissions a little more in-hand. Thank you so much George! Also big shout out to Callie S. Blackstone, the newest member of the editorial team who’s been an absolute all-star on the poetry side.
But again, I’m like four hours from when I need to be greeting students with a smile and a functioning brain, so I’ll leave it there and just let you launch into the new issue, which is almost entirely pieces submitted to the contests—and an awesome piece of non-fiction that has been patiently awaiting this Fall issue. Enjoy them, because we certainly did!