I’ve been thinking a lot about labor while putting together this issue of Bluestem. This past spring saw an unprecedented number of strikes in Illinois institutions of higher education: in April, at one point, four universities were on strike at the same time, including Eastern Illinois University, Bluestem’s mothership. (Technically Bluestem is independent of EIU, but has always been run by EIU faculty and staff.) Strikes are strange things: on the one hand, they are dispiriting and difficult. Those of us on the picket line at EIU fretted over our students, over our lost wages, over morale, over the difficult negotiations that often brought disappointing news. But strikes are also full of joyful moments, moments of connection, pride, and conviction.

One of the things EIU faculty did in the lead-up to our strike, when it looked like such action was probably inevitable, was something called a Work Out, where we gathered in public spaces to do our work, making visible the kinds of labor that we do as university faculty. (Lots of squinting at computers and typing, frankly; it wasn’t very dramatic.) But our experiences on the picket line made me even more aware of the idea of labor in creative spaces, the labor those of us do as writers and artists that is so often invisible and misunderstood. Most of us who make art seriously have been subject to skepticism or scorn from others somewhere along the way. Why, people seem to imply with their questions or dismissals, are you entitled to time, money, and resources to make collages or write stories or fiddle with poems? Is that really labor? Looks like goofing around to me. The labor of those of us who work on literary magazines is similarly perplexing to many and, thus, is woefully underpaid and underrecognized. The hours and hours we spend as a staff reading, editing, corresponding, promoting, and designing are because there can never be enough acknowledgement of artists’ labor in our society. We curate these selections a few times a year precisely to celebrate the work—hard, long, sometimes joyful, sometimes disappointing—that artmakers do, to place it in the spotlight where it deserves to be. This in itself is a solidarity: we have each other’s backs because we know that a society that doesn’t properly value the labor of its artists is not a fully healthy one. May we continue to strive for what we deserve, and may we never fail to celebrate the poems, the stories, the essays, and the art that result from that striving. Enjoy the ones we’ve chosen for you here.

-Colleen Abel