This is a list of just a few things on my radar that are going right in the literary world right now—each of which involves resilience, perseverance, or recovery of some kind:
Crab Orchard Review is back! Crab Orchard Review is a longtime favorite literary journal of many writers I know. It was founded by Allison Joseph, Carolyn Alessio, Jon Tribble, and Richard Peterson in 1995, and went on hiatus for a number of years following the untimely death of Jon Tribble. It’s just been relaunched in an attractive digital format by Allison Joseph.
Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts & Letters is also back! Callaloo has been an essential literary and scholarly journal for work by and about writers of the African Disapora for decades. After a multiyear transition from its longtime institutional home to operating as an independent nonprofit organization, Callaloo is back on a quarterly publication schedule, headed by new executive editor Kyla Kupferstein Torres. This year’s issues include a two-issue set on Black Appalachia guest-edited by Crystal Wilkinson. (Disclosure: I currently serve as a managing editor at Callaloo.)
Speaking of Appalachia, I live in Asheville, North Carolina, which was devastated by Hurricane Helene along with broader Western North Carolina and beyond. Two literary organizations that stand out for their efforts in the aftermath of the hurricane are Asheville-based Punch Bucket Lit, which has been collecting donations directly and distributing emergency supplies, and Birds, LLC, a small press that ran a mutual aid effort that offered free books from a number of presses to those who made donations to local relief organizations BeLoved Asheville, ROAR (Rural Organizing and Resilience) and MountainTrue. Birds, LLC’s incentive effort is over, but please continue to donate to these organizations, and please continue to support literary organizations in Western North Carolina, including my own press, Orison Books.
—Luke Hankins, founder and editor, Orison Books
Photo credit: Hannah Natalya Photography