David Drogowski – Web Editor, Jennymag.org
When the first issue of Jenny magazine was published in the fall of 2010, our small team of collaborators were sure of only a few things. We knew that we wanted to produce a product with integrity and quality. We knew that we wanted to connect to the world in a literary conversation. And we knew that we wanted to lay the foundation for this magazine to last long after our involvement, that our project was bigger than ourselves.
In this spring issue, it seems fitting to celebrate the birth and blossoming of the next generation of Jenny staff that will carry our magazine into the future.
Our magazine staff more than doubled this year with the addition of our Jenny internship course into the English Department course catalog. You can view this issue’s staff list here. The incoming staff has proven resourceful, motivated, and inventive. Their fundraising efforts have generated an unprecedented level of donations from area businesses and individuals who support what we do. Please have a look at our sponsors list, and be sure to visit those local businesses who have been so generous to us, past and present. Sponsorship has granted us resources to embark on new projects within Jenny, which you’ll be seeing in the near future. Our reach grows thanks to your generosity.
This issue is drawn from a diverse palette of voices, palettes, and atmospheres. It is exemplary of the quality we strive to publish.
In fiction, Michael Dempsey’s “Heroica,” our issue opener, dances between lamentation and euphoria in examining our world of too many villains and too few heroes. Bridgid Cassin’s “Birdsong” is very much a fable in the tone of old wisdom, and it’s entirely unique in our magazine’s history. In nonfiction, “Temps,” Erin Elizabeth Smith’s plunge into transitional employment, is so personable and richly witty that it becomes impossible not to relate to the grind.
In poetry, Larry Blazek’s “Playing Fingerbones with Coyote” is a densely-loaded riddle of a poem that will stay with you long after reading. “The Egyptian Revolution” probes the results of a shaken region in the wake of the arab spring. And “The Other Side,” our issue’s closer, brings this issue’s conversation back home to where we work and live, a transcendental reflection in which the ordinary becomes truly extraordinary.
Thank you for your support, your interest, and the common love we share for the beauty of art. This issue is for you.
-David Drogowski