Ashely: Let's be clear, this batch is weird. I say this in the most complimentary fashion. I'm so glad that people feel like Lammergeier is a place were they can experiment with the boundaries of genre and form. Like Jacque mentions below, the world is in some dire circumstances and the pieces we have this issue are ready to confront the personal and national conflicts head-on. Thank you as always for taking time to submit and share. Also, be sure to check out our website for some updates that we think will really benefit the place. Time to clean up the cobwebs and carefully scoot out the spider friends from the corners!
Ethan: If the unintended theme of last issue's fiction was genre hybridity, this time it's definitely flash fiction. After receiving mostly short stories for our first two issues, our inbox was bombarded with quality flash for this one. Mileva Anastasiadou, Emily Capettini, and Matthew Wollin are three very different writers, but all three are relentless in their pursuit of the perfect sentence. The words in these stories are as charged as poetry, so read them with care.
Speaking of updates, we're creating a tag system for all our prose, poetry, and interviews to make finding old posts easier. Look for it before the next issue!
Jacqueline: IT'S SPOOKY SZN, MY FRIENDS [airhorn noises], and I don't know about you, but this is the time of year when I'm confident that I'm my best self. As we shrug off the summer and start to marvel over the husks of beautiful, dead things, it feels important to remember just how much there is to fall in love with. ...Let's be honest, things are rough and on fire right now, and as I was reading for our fall issue, I found myself attracted to poems that neither shrugged off that feeling, nor languished in it in any way that felt tawdry (though, let's be clear right now, I love tawdry. I AM tawdry). Instead, these poems struck that balance between that which nourishes us and that which makes us brittle and small. I see rawness in these pieces, trauma, sadness, disgust. But I also see wonder, and when things are on fire, wonder feels a lot like love.
Also, if you didn't have a chance to check it out before, give our Lit Mag Crash Course a read! If you're new to the submission game, or know someone who is, we have a list of free resources to help you get your feet wet.
Thank you for joining us again, beloveds. I hope that you enjoy the issue.