Ashely: In 2019, we released the first issue of Lammergeier. While putting together that first issue, I would never been able to predict all the upheaval we would experience in the next five years, trite as it is to point out. However, I did hope that this magazine would bring me years of joy, purpose, and community building; this hope has been borne out again and again. Over these past sixteen issues, I've been privileged enough to read and share timely, imaginative selections of hybrid and creative nonfiction. More so, I've been consistently humbled by the generosity you've shown. We hope we can call on your generosity one more time to celebrate all the authors featured in this issue before we enter our indefinite hiatus.
For five years, Lammergeier was the rare consistency in my life. It is a bittersweet feeling to step away, even if it is not forever. Thank you to Madeline Graham and Tom Laichas for sending us off in style. Thank you to all of you who have shared your work with us over the years. May your flights be easy and bones always plentiful.
Jacqueline: Grab your party favors, beloveds. It's time for a party at the end of the world. For the past few years, it seems as though each of these notes has begun with a message of hope and solidarity in the face of some new facet of unrest, of upheaval, of torments large and small. In them, a tacit message that we'd ride out the storm and see calmer waters together.
But now, with the asteroid looming and our party hats askew, I see that my hope was pointed, perhaps, in the wrong direction. You see, here will always be another torment; the waters will always rise. The future will not save us, so we will save one another. And isn't it wonderful, the way we make our homes in the bric-a-brac of catastrophe? Isn't it incredible, the way we are the ones who make comfort and joy?
For this final issue before our hiatus, we've assembled a crew of poets whose voices feel like different shades of home, like the little garden of bones we've always hoped this magazine will be. ...Also, Jendi Reiter gave the best interview we've ever gotten for this magazine, hands down.
Thank you, beloveds, for your time and attention. Thank you for the last five years. Thank you for this home we've made in these piles of bones.
Ethan: The hardest part of editing Lammergeier for me is choosing Featured Fiction for each issue. I agonize and second-guess myself about it endlessly, and over the years, I've built up a list of Lammergeier authors I wish I'd had the chance to interview. When we decided to go on an indefinite hiatus, my mind immediately went to these writers, and I decided to hell with it — now was the time to reach out. I contacted Melissa Benton Barker, Sylvan Lebrun, DJ Shoemaker, and Matthew Wollin, some of the authors from the first few issues who'd unwittingly defined for me what this magazine was about, and they very kindly replied with new stories. To be able to enjoy their work again and see how they've grown as writers has been a real treat.
On top of that, by pure coincidence, Helena Pantsis of Featured Fiction Issue 12 fame chose to submit again, and she hasn't lost her edge. And despite being even more neurotic about selecting fiction than usual for this issue, I quickly fell for Susann Cokal's "A Chocolate Nobel." If this is final issue, I'll be proud to say she was the last new author we published.
Unfortunately, there's still only one interview spot in this issue, and there are only so many people I can reasonably include in the table of contents. But my hope is that every writer we've published, and really every writer who has ever trusted us with their work, will read this note and understand some glimmer of the gratitude we have for them. While my fellow editors and I certainly worked hard on Lammergeier, it was all of you who made it what it was. If we return — and this issue is as good an argument for that as it gets — it will be because the chance to read your work and share just how fucking cool it is with the world was too much to pass up.