Letters from the Editors

By Amy Dotson and Gwyneth Henke

Issue 51 • Spring 2025

From co-editor-in-chief Gwyneth Henke:

This month, the National Endowment for the Arts was forced to rescind dozens of grants awarded in 2025 to cultural institutions across the country. Literary magazines and small presses nationwide saw their funding gutted. As reported by Publishers Weekly, the agency wrote in its termination letter that it was “updating its grantmaking policy priorities to focus funding on projects that reflect the nation’s rich artistic heritage and creativity as prioritized by the President.”

What frightens me about Trump’s directive is not just the dire financial threat it poses to so many great magazines that have now lost the money they counted on to pay their staff and contributors, though that alone is devastating. It’s also the vision this administration has of art: as something monolithic and obedient, able to be deployed, like a soldier or a weapon, according to a single person’s whims.

Literature does not have “priorities,” though propaganda certainly does. Literature—the kind these brilliant presses and magazines have been creating for decades—cannot be used as a tool. It does not jump according to a president’s demands. Instead, literature provokes, interrogates, questions. What’s more, it breathes. It has a life of its own. Stories create worlds realer than the one which will try to destroy them.

I believe that we—and by we, I mean all writers, artists, and champions of the arts—will survive this attack, because art cannot be driven out of life, no matter how cruel our government may show itself to be. But as co-editor-in-chief of this magazine, I’m also grieving with every magazine and small press across the country who now finds their ability to publish great art and writing suddenly undermined, derided, and threatened. I do not take lightly our continued ability, and responsibility, to exist.

In this issue, you’ll find art doing what it does—coming to life. Even under hostile circumstances. Even in devastating times. I’m grateful to every writer and artist in this issue who dared to do so, and to every member of our staff who helped support them. I hope you’ll join us in Issue 51 and the world it has made.

– Gwyneth Henke

From co-editor-in-chief Amy Dotson

What Gwyneth said. No, but really—turns out we can no longer afford to take public media for granted. Gwyneth and I are the same age, and the current dismantlement of public media is, shall we say… unfamiliar to us. We’ve read about these things happening in different times, in different places, but we tend to have this feeling in America of being immune to such devastating policy. That couldn’t be further from the truth. The Trump administration is trying to uproot our systems of speech and expression.

Here’s what’s up: In the face of this change, just keep trying. I’m going to. I know Gwyneth is going to. Attune and adjust your effort levels to keep journals, literature, and education alive. Please, continue to write and submit. Write as much as you want. As much as you need to. Write about what you need to write about. And submit to every outlet you want to submit to. Writing and creating is already a radical act in a capitalist landscape, but it’s becoming even more radical—and, correlatively, even more important.

Keep it up, y’all. I hope our paths continue to cross.

Amy Dotson and Gwyneth Henke

Amy and Gwyneth are the co-editors-in-chief of Blue Mesa Review. Amy 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 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, Diane Oliver, and Susan Choi. She also makes paper cut-outs.