As writers we write whether there is a book deal or "a top tier" publication in the works or not. I certainly believe literary magazines are getting better than they were before thanks to the diversity in our field. I mainly launched Raleigh Review as an exercise to help me build a community that would have me as a member. Of course, I hope I always fit in at Raleigh Review, but for now I am really enjoying being a community member of our magazine. I don't mind it when some think of literary magazines as stepping stones, but this magazine is my only stone, so if a poet or writer uses the well-lit path of Raleigh Review as a springboard to earn a living with their writing, I am very happy for them.
When my eyes and my heart became weaker as I aged I gave up on calling myself an editor back in 2019. I am no grammarian. As a poet I am an artist and a guardian of language. I also really love reading good fiction that is written by writers who are both artists and poets. As a poet who has recently taken an interest in writing long forms, I understand we lose some of our license when we step over the line to writing prose.
That said, my advice is to live dangerously during the creation of any new works. As artists, we should take initial risks with style even while we must respect the already established form. Just as we must know the rules in poetry in order to effectively break the rules in the creation of new poems, the same is true for prose writing as well.
The editors and reading teams who work at Raleigh Review are both artistically and technically sound. Our editorial teams are uniquely generous with their time and their skills. Our selection process aims to be less subjective as we have multiple readers on each poem and story. When just one reader decides on the work in the queue, the decision is absolutely subjective. However, when multiple readers read each work, the selection process becomes less subjective and more fair.
We hope you enjoy this issue as it contains our multi-genre Geri Digiorno prize winners. We thank you for your support of our Raleigh Review, as we believe art must challenge as well as entertain.
