Editor’s Note

This is a breakthrough issue for Solstice where we integrate more forcefully the power of the online format with literature and photography, and illustrate how online journals can promote juried literature rather than dilute it.  We are thrilled with our new updated web design, which offers mobile friendly interface and alternative reading options for e-readers and tablets.  Our new home page features a slide show of our authors and excerpts from their work.  Also we’re featuring new Audio Author Chats, the first one with Roland Merullo, author of the recent novel, Lunch with Buddha.  Also, check out our new Book Review section; the first review by our nonfiction editor Richard Hoffman is on D. Nurkse’s new poetry collection, A Night in Brooklyn.  (Four of D. Nurkse’s poems are in the poetry section of this mag.)  Also, we feature a reactivation of our new Blog by Eugenio Volpe.

And surely you didn’t miss on our new Homepage our new cover:  a portrait by the famous photographer Lou Jones, from his lauded book Final Exposure:  Portraits from Death Row.  Click on the thumbnail images and you won’t forget them.  Read Lou Jones’s artist’s statement, and ponder.

And, of course, for this vital issue we continue to offer vital literature of diversity and literature from the margins.   A few examples:  in poetry, read Major Jackson, and also Diane Glancy, whose grant from the Museum of the American Indian has influenced her new poetry.  Helen Elaine Lee writes from the point of view of an African American prisoner, echoing in some ways Lou Jones’s photos, an echo that ricochets into nonfiction with Jean Trounstine’s essay about her friendship with a woman released from prison.

Some of the lit we publish uses humor and irony to probe deeply, such as in Sean Conway’s moving piece of self destruction, or Jose Skinner’s loss of innocence story.  Speaking of innocence, Roland Merullo’s essay challenges concepts of innocence between student and teacher.  And speaking of irony, read Dawn Potter’s challenge to the loss of innocence in love.

There are many more rich pieces.  Please leave comments for these fine authors.

And do check out our new staff page with their photos so you can get to know our ever-growing group of writers and other volunteers working together to promote diversity of all types in the arts.  Also, we give deep thanks to our new Web developer/designer, Andrai Whitted.

So why not also check out our donations page?

To all, welcome to our community.   Warmly, Lee Hope