Note from the Editor-in-chief

by Lee Hope

What an array of insightful, gifted, provocative pieces we offer in this Spring issue!  Please go to our individual genre Editors’ Notes for salient info on our Spring Issue’s gifted contributors.

We announce a new Genre for Solstice:  Graphic Lit, the expert editor is our Digital Editor, Andrai Whitted!  Please view our first piece in graphic poetry.  See the TOC!  And please also view the edgy cover photo by William Betcher and click on the nine thumbnails of damaged toy soldiers. Also, a must see:  Lee Hope’s interview with Jennifer Boyden, Northwest poet and novelist.  And Andrai Whitted’s interviewwith Franklin Einspruch, graphic poet.

Deep thanks to our editors (Richard Hoffman, Iain Haley Pollock, Andrai Whitted and very special thanks to our guest fiction co-editor Marjan Kamali for her powerful, diverse selections! Stay tuned for Marjan’s novel The Stationary Shop, Gallery/Simon&Schuster, forthcoming in June. And many thanks to Barbara Siegel Carlson, editor of poetry-in-translation, and to our two Assistant Editors, Robbie Gamble in poetry, Amy Yelin in nonfiction, and to Managing Editor, Franny Zhang.

Our ANNUAL CONTEST with judges Paul Beatty, Alexandra Marzano-Lesnevich, and Reginald Dwayne Betts is now open! Please submit or share with others as we have fantastic judges this year. Also stay tuned for vital info on upcoming initiatives such as our new Reading & Music Series, Night Riffs!

Read on, promote diversity, resist discrimination and hate speech!   Lee Hope

Lee Hope

Lee Hope

Lee Hope, is the author of the novel Horsefever, a finalist in the Midwest Book Awards. She is a recipient of a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship, and a Maine Arts Commission Fellowship for Fiction. She has published stories in numerous literary journals such as Witness and The North American Review. She founded and directed a low-residency MFA program and has taught at various universities. She also teaches for Changing Lives Through Literature, which serves people on probation and parole.

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