ISSUE SEVEN: Contents & A Note
featuring: MIKE NAGEL, VIC NOGAY, LESLIE WILBER, and KEVIN GRAUKE, with original watercolors by AARON BURCH
MIKE NAGEL
Notes from the Blue Zone
VIC NOGAY
To my husband
LESLIE WILBER
Moonlight at the Tiendita
KEVIN GRAUKE
Doris the Florist
A Note:
This magazine was the softest thing about me until early Monday morning, when I watched my wife deliver our baby girl. It occurs to me that I could toughen things up around here a little, starting with a few observations after a year back with Little Engines.
First, saying I make a literary magazine or calling myself an editor is 58% embarrassing. On a recent panel with other editors, I’m listening to my fellow mag people talk, and in my head I’m going: oh jesus god please. Then it’s my turn, and I’m hearing my own voice going through that awful microphone and out the P.A. speakers and I’m going: oh jesus god please.
Next, submission culture: Yikes. Like so many once ok things, I bet the lame nature of the submission game is entirely the fault of social media. If I didn’t have this phone, I truly wouldn’t know that there are 3,872 other mags doing this same thing, out there with our logos and prefab websites. Is it a scene or a circle jerk? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’m DYING to call for submissions somewhere other than Twitter. I’m LONGING for readers to find the magazine somewhere beyond these rotten apps. I’m highly suspicious that the only people reading the mags are the writers submitting to them. Appreciate you all, and want you here of course no question, but to any reader who has never submitted a piece of writing to a literary magazine and has no future plans to do so: I love you!
Lastly, the content warnings are gonna kill this whole thing dead!
Anyway, here’s the new issue of the literary magazine I edit. CW: It’s both funny and sad. You’ll remember VIC NOGAY and MIKE NAGEL from recent issues. They’re back with new work, and joined by LESLIE WILBER and KEVIN GRAUKE. I’m very into the half-and-half split between newcomers and repeat performers. Not trying to overload you or me or anybody.
All back issues are gone, gone, gone, but you can stake your claim to Issue Seven in newsprint now, no charge.
From a new old dad,
Adam
Nashville, July 2022
ISSUE SEVEN’S
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE:
AARON BURCH
Aaron has painted for No Contact, Flash Frog, and the Great British Bake-Off themed zine A Bit Stodgy. His short fiction and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in The Smart Set, Complete Sentence, and Rejection Letters. He is the founding editor of Hobart and co-founder of its more recent offshoots, HAD and WAS. His first novel, Year of the Buffalo, is forthcoming in Fall 2022. You can see more art and read selected writing at aaronburch.net.
