Issue No. 8, 2014-15. Editor’s Notes

Without a doubt, winter is the most exciting time of year for West 10th. Every year we set a deadline early in December, only to end up pushing it back to the last few days of the semester (although, to be honest, we considered poems and stories and art from well into the New Year). We received hundreds of submissions, an amount that seemed incredibly daunting at first. Still, the editorial board and I delved into the work of reading stories and poems by our fellow NYU students, and sifted through the pieces until we ended up with the issue you’re holding right now.

To say that the pieces melded into a pretty conversation wouldn’t be entirely true, because each work has something utterly different to say. Some pieces are quiet, some loud. Some are abrasive, while some have their own mellow rhythm. Still, what each has in common is something that a former professor told me was the most telling indicator of good writing: They either make you want to start writing something new, or make you wish you had written them yourself.

What you will find in the pages of this edition is not a simple conversation but an unpredictable one. You will stare down from a mountaintop, you will breathe a canary into your lungs, and you will hold a rifle in your hands. These are pieces that we argued about, laughed about, and fought hard for.

The people who have made this issue possible deserve more thanks than I could possibly give on this page. Our managing editor Michelle Ling and layout editor Chuck Kuan managed to fix problems I didn’t know we had. The members of our editorial board lent much-needed energy to our conversations. I would like to thank Joanna Yas, for guiding me through my time as editor-in-chief, and I would also like to thank Maeve Nolan, our previous editor-in-chief, for giving me invaluable insight and responding to my panicked text messages when I found myself without the slightest idea of what to do.

I would also like to thank Matthew Rohrer and Darin Strauss for selecting the Editors’ Award recipients. We are grateful to Justin Taylor for having an insightful conversation with us, and to Cathy Park Hong for graciously giving us one of her poems. Thank you to all of the writers, artists, and readers who made this issue—including the conversation and diffcult choices surrounding it—possible. Like I said, this winter was an exciting one, but now it’s the spring and I’m delighted to share with your our 2014–2015 issue of West 10th.

Eric Stiefel

Masthead

EDITOR IN CHIEF

Eric Stiefel

MANAGING EDITOR

Michelle Ling

POETRY EDITORS

Rebecca Pecaut
Joe Masco

PROSE EDITOR

Anzhe Zhang

ASSISTANT POETRY EDITORS

Colin Drohan
Brittany Siler

ASSISTANT PROSE EDITOR

Alyssa Matesic