Letters from the Editors

By Gwyneth Henke and Amy Dotson

Issue 50 • Fall 2024

From Amy Dotson

You could be reading anything right now, but you’re reading this. And for that, I thank you. I’ll try to be at least mildly entertaining for the next three hundred or so words.

Blue Mesa Review, it seems, is in a constant state of flux. Each year brings new editors, and we all work hard to curate something according to our tastes and ideals and interpretation of the mission statement, and then the next group of people comes in. And, I think, that is part of the beauty of Blue Mesa Review. It is never just one thing. It represents a flow of ideas, people, and writing. A river you can never step in twice.

You may have noticed that there are two of us Editors-in-Chief here. Yes, it’s true, there are two. Gwyneth and I have put our heads together to form one moderately sized amorphous blob of ideas and emails and heart that has brought you this issue and the events surrounding it. Really, our amorphous blob consists of six+ people—our wonderful, punctual, hardworking team of editors: Gwyne, John, Lucas, Paris, and Áine. This corner of the internet was brought to you by all of them. And also me. And also you, whoever you are! Reader, contributor, friend, someone we emailed at any point over the last few months, et cetera. We know it takes a lot of people working for the love of the game to put a journal together, and we appreciate everyone at every step. There are a lot of literary journals out there, but we made this one, and we’re doing cool things with it. And that means a lot.

Part of our vision this year has included putting on local events. And the more we do that, the more I realize that people can be here from anywhere. For this issue’s launch party, for example, we have recordings that people have graciously provided so we can listen to those who physically can’t be in Albuquerque. How cool is that? That’s what creating literary spaces is all about—trying new things to accommodate literary spirit wherever it may reside.

So let’s celebrate this eclectic issue. Local, far, fantastical, personal. This issue’s got it all. Come, sample, indulge. We’ve got something you’ll enjoy.

From Gwyneth Henke

And speaking of rivers, stepped in twice or not, these days the sandhill cranes are wintering along the banks of the Rio Grande here in Albuquerque. If, at dusk, you walk through the dirt paths in the Bosque—slipping past cottonwoods full of mistletoe, porcupines clinging to their branches, and weaving through coyote willows and sacaton—you’ll break out onto a strip of sandy shore and see them gathering along the islands in the middle of the water, making their beautiful, alien calls. As night falls, shapes will appear, deep down the bend of the water. You’ll wait for them to sharpen, take form, clarify themselves into four, six, twelve more birds, swooping down to join their flock for the night, calling out to each other the whole way. They’ve been doing this for millennia, but somehow it still feels both ancient and brand new; like the very first time they’re doing something that they’ve always done.

Issue 50 reminds me of that. It’s a difficult world for literary magazines—and it feels, especially this fall, like it might be an increasingly difficult world for literature. But for thirty-five years, different combinations of graduate students and faculty at the University of New Mexico’s MFA have been gathering to make a magazine. We’ve been reading beautiful writing from across the world and calling out to one another, asking, Did you hear that? Are you feeling what I’m feeling? People arrive and leave; the magazine changes shape from paper to digital, in size and scope; and still it feels, each semester, like the very first time we’re doing something that we’ve always done.

I hope you’ll join us in our Bosque this fall, on these banks, and listen to the calling of the cranes who have stopped a while to sing with us.

Amy Dotson and Gwyneth Henke

Amy and Gwyneth are the co-editors-in-chief of Blue Mesa Review for 2024/2025. Amy Dotson is a writer from eastern Kentucky, though she has also lived in central Kentucky. She is in her third year of her MFA and is working on a sci-fi novel that’s not not about sea lions. Her work tends to deal with class, places affected by political neglect, and sea lions. Like many twenty-somethings, she has recently gotten really into rock climbing. Like many twenty-somethings, she has hurt herself while rock climbing.

Gwyneth Henke (she/her) is a writer from Saint Louis, Missouri. A third-year fiction student in the MFA at the University of New Mexico, she graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a degree in religious studies and creative writing. In her reading life, she loves Haruki Murakami, Elena Ferrante, Mieko Kawakami, Jhumpa Lahiri, Joan Didion, and Susan Choi. She makes paper cut-outs and has recently learned to felt.

Max Cavitch

Max Cavitch is a photographer, writer, and teacher living in Philadelphia. His photographs have appeared in publications including Al-Tiba9 Contemporary Art, Amsterdam Quarterly, Denver Quarterly, Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, F-Stop Magazine, The Journal of Wild Culture, L’Esprit Literary Review, Phoebe, and Politics/Letters, and they’ve been exhibited most recently at Art Room Gallery, the Biennale di Senigallia, Blank Wall Gallery, Boomer Gallery, the Chania International Photo Festival, Decagon Gallery, the Glasgow Gallery of Photography, and the Ten Moir Gallery. Since 2019, he has been a contributing photographer for the public-science project, iNaturalist.