Summer 2018

Summer 2018

Dear Valued Readers, Our Summer Contest Issue is always a special joy, to celebrate such excellence, diversity, passion, and compassion in writing today, as a counterbalance, and even a saving grace, against the forces that attempt to divide us.

We thank our superb judges: Terrance Hayes in poetry, Phillip Lopate in nonfiction, and Ann Hood in fiction for their careful selection of winners and finalists.

Special thanks to all who submitted. We received almost double the number of submissions this year, so the choices were especially difficult with such a plethora of fine writing.

Also, gratitude to our Solstice editors, Iain Haley Pollack in poetry and Richard Hoffman in nonfiction, for their careful selection of Solstice Editors’ Picks, along with mine as fiction editor. And thanks to our assistant editors: Robert Gamble in poetry, Amy Yelin in nonfiction, and Brenda Prescott in fiction for their essential roles in selection and judging for this issue. And thanks to Barbara Siegel Carlson for editing the fine poetry-in-translation. And thanks to our terrific readers and to our managing editor Anita Ballesteros! And essential thanks to Andrai Whitted, our Digital Editor, who turns each online issue into a reality. A magazine is only as good as its team!

We will comment on specific winners, finalists, editors’ picks, and featured authors in each Editor’s Note, so please click on the appropriate genre.

Also special thanks to Lou Jones, a photographer of international repute, for his evocative, original images from his expanding PanAFRICA series, which embodies a vital view of Africa at work. To support his project, please go to his Kickstarter campaign. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/102761919/panafricaproject-volume-one?ref=25w05p

And welcome to our new fab interns, Sarah Walker, Livia Hermiz and Michelle Arnwine Frias, also to our new readers/reviewers in poetry, Eileen Cleary and Richard Cambridge.

Also, good news in that “Breaking Boundaries: Solstice Magazine’s Tenth Anniversary Reading” was just accepted for the 2019 AWP conference! And our first annual print issue will appear this fall! And we will have an essay in The Best American Essays 2018 appearing this fall. Additionally this fall, Solstice Magazine will be sharing a booth at the Boston Book Festival with the fine magazine Pangyrus. So stay tuned!

Here’s to the continued, redeeming power of literature and diversity! Lee Hope

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