Letter from the Editor: Summer 2022

When I first joined the Bluestem staff in 2019, we had a brand new editor-in-chief and brand new format, having just gone digital and released a gorgeous new website. Although we’d made a lot of changes in a short time, lots of the staff had been at their positions for some time and, of course, we had our fifty-plus year history behind us.

Then came COVID. 

To keep a long story short, the pandemic did to Bluestem what it did to many organizations. We had retirements; editors moved on to other positions. We had to take a hiatus while we figured out staffing and funding issues. Like Alice, we had stepped through the looking glass and were adjusting our vision to a new world. 

This issue, Summer 2022, is another new beginning for Bluestem. I’ve gratefully stepped into the EIC role with a major helping hand from Bess Winter, our previous captain. We also have brand new editors in both the creative nonfiction and fiction genres: Aaron White and Caitlin DiGiacomo. Finally, we’ve committed to growing our team of readers and interns to make for a more dynamic and democratic editorial process. It’s important to us to read each piece we get with the care it deserves.

So far, these new changes seem to be paying off: our Summer issue is a treasure trove of wonderfully weird, expertly crafted and innovative work. Clayre Benzadón’s haunting cento “God’s Broken [Body]” reminds us of the ways that poems can speak to, and with, other poems; Rosalynde Vas Dias’ “Ardor” reminds us of the athletic possibilities of language. Our prose work is equally impressive. From Kat Saunders’ researched memoir of a very memorable substitute teacher to Rosamund Lannin’s short story about a young girl on the edge of discovering who she really is outside of the narratives she’s inherited from her mother, there is something here to please every reader. And it’s all tied together by Tali Weinberg’s weavings inspired by climate change and wildfires and their effects on the human body. 

We’d like to think that the very first editors in 1966 would be happy and pleased to see where we’ve managed to take their brainchild and how we’ve been able to withstand the rough seas of the past several years. Here’s to the hope that the best is yet to come. 

Enjoy the issue!

Colleen Abel