Letter from the Editor

By Evelyn Olmos

Issue 46 • Fall 2022

Dear Reader,

As genre editors, and then as Editor-in-Chief, one of our very first tasks is to stand in a classroom full of the semester’s BMR readers and tell them what we would like to see in our magazine. When I was poetry editor, this somehow felt easier. I picked a poem I love (Carrie Fountain’s “Experience”) and spoke about the things that are important to me in poetry: accessible language, being able to inhabit the world the poet is building, visceral images, vulnerability, and honesty. But when the Editor-in-Chief position was passed down to me, I panicked. I knew I would have to speak about so much more than what I like and expect from poetry. And so, when it was my turn to speak on my vision for the upcoming year, and the values I have been entrusted to pass along, I practiced by pacing around my house for days.

The truth is, I don’t know how to be an “Editor-in-Chief”. When I told my family I got the position I had to google translate it into Spanish. Then, I had to do more googling because I thought it felt too literal (editor en jefe) and it felt like one of those times google translate just gives you a string of words to appease you, but you sound like an idiot when you try to explain to your Spanish-speaking family what you mean. What I am trying to tell you is that, besides for my predecessors, I don’t know a single person who has been in this position before and having this new and unexplored responsibility was, and still is, terrifying. I knew that I could get up there and talk about the expectations that I had from poetry as poetry editor and apply them to the other genres. But I wanted to also talk about tradition and my vision for this magazine. There are two things I kept in mind while coming up with what to tell a classroom of curious, and maybe a bit bored, BMR readers: 1. I am the fourth consecutive person of color in the Editor-in-Chief position at BMR, and 2. our founder, Rudolfo Anaya, wanted to create a “literary magazine everyone will be proud of” and spent his career championing for the voices of New Mexicans and Southwestern writers to be uplifted. I wanted to make sure that I use this position to continue to champion for writers of color, and this semester we tried our best to do so by lowering our contest fee for BIPOC writers and having free submissions for Indigenous writers on Indigenous Peoples Day. I hope these are changes that continue for years to come and that our future editors continue to pass along this tradition.

And so, after much pacing and deliberation, when it was time for me to get up in front of that classroom, I blacked out. I have bad social anxiety, which is so writerly of me, but I don’t really remember much of what I said. What I do know is that I must’ve done something right, because the writing inside this issue is honest, vulnerable, and allows you to inhabit the world the writer created for us. Or maybe it had nothing to do with me and our readers killed it. Regardless, I am proud of Issue 46, and hope you all are too.

Lastly, I want to thank every person that made this issue possible starting with our Summer 2022 Contest Judges, James Crews, Ben Loory, and Debra Monroe who signed up without hesitation to help us reward the great writers who make up this issue. BMR’s faculty advisor, Marisa Clark, who is the most energetic person on our team and cares for us and this magazine so much. Our undergraduate and graduate readers who put so much time into going through the submissions carefully. My team, Ruben, Anthony, Kyndall, and Tyler, whose hard work encompass these pages. But a special shout-out to Cyrus, who I force to listen to all my ideas (and whose beautiful collage you saw on page 6). All of the artists who let us use their artwork in this issue. And, of course, to all who submitted to our contest and those of you who are reading. A big congratulations to the winners: Anita, Laura, Dennise, Eric, Andrew, Elizabeth, Rachael, Amy, and C.R. Your work stood out amongst hundreds of submissions. I hope we get to continue to hear from your voices, the world needs it.

Thank you,

Evelyn Olmos

Editor-in-Chief, Blue Mesa Review