FROM THE EDITOR Oh, what a fantastic but frustrating year 2013 was for CCLaP! And this magazine you’re holding in your hands is a good example of why; for although I’ve been immensely proud of the few issues we managed to actually get done and released this year, we far and away missed the goal of putting out an issue every month, namely because everything that CCLaP does has all taken a big leap in popularity this year, to the point of us having constant struggles in 2013 just to get all of it finished in the first place. But with the addition of five new staffers this year (marketing director Lori Hettler, photography editor Rex Brink, and critics Karl Wolff, Travis Fortney and Madeleine Maccar), things have finally started getting back under control again, and I’m happy to be presenting this newest issue of the Journal just a month after the last one (amazing!), with the hopes that this will be a regular monthly occurrence all through 2014. And that’s because we’ve got big news for the Journal and 2014: namely, because of a recent switch in our overall publishing program, starting next year we will finally be getting rid of the super-expensive print-on-demand paper version of this publication ($22 an issue, which is just too expensive for nearly everyone), and presenting these instead as 150-page trade paperback books for only $8 an issue, complete with ISBN numbers so that you can order them directly from your favorite local bookstore. We’re combining this, then, with an expansion in scope of our interviews and original fiction, plus are adding a new staffer who will be creating and maintaining an iOS app for us; and we hope this will make the Journal a viable new national mainstream publication in 2014, available in stores nationwide and with optimized e-mag versions for both Kindles and iPads. But in the meanwhile, here is our last issue of 2013, and our last to be presented in full 8.5 x 11 inch format; and I gotta say, it’s a pretty good one too! As always, you can find all the versions of this issue, plus all previous and future issues, at [cclapcenter. com/journal]; read the online “flippable” version of the PDF at Issuu.com [issuu.com/jasonpettus/cclapjournal03]; purchase the optimized Kindle version for $4.99 at [bit.ly/cj03amazon] , or pick up the full-sized print-on-demand paper edition at [bit. ly/cj03paper]. These paid versions are the only way this magazine’s contributors make money, so I encourage you to spend a few bucks and help support the production of future issues, as well as a robust and always intellectually stimulating blog containing this content that you can visit every day for free. Like I mentioned, we’re now starting to accept submissions of individual short stories and essays, as well as pitches for interviews, so please direct all your inquiries directly to me at cclapcenter@gmail.com. I look forward to hearing from you. —Jason Pettus
CENTER HAPPENINGS It’s been mostly a quiet late autumn for everyone at CCLaP, as the staff takes a muchneeded holiday break, although there have been some interesting things going on here and there with the center as well. Perhaps the biggest news is the continual expansion of our new “Studio 505” performance space, a.k.a. Jason Pettus’ new apartment in the Uptown neighborhood; September saw a reading there by visiting author Maureen Foley, while October and November brought us local author Mark R. Brand and St. Louis musician Ken Kase. The shows were a humble but great start to our growing liveevents schedule here in Chicago, and we hope to begin expanding this program in both
scope and size throughout 2014. But this autumn has seen us getting out and about town as well; in October we were at the Evanston Public Library for a special performance from neighborhood denizen Brand, while in November CCLaP made it out to the second annual Chicago Book Expo, where we had a chance to meet and talk with dozens of our blog readers, along with thousands of new lit fans. As always, the Expo was a real highlight of the entire year for the local literary community, and our congratulations go out to the hardworking
staff there for another successful event. We look forward to announcing big news about our publishing program next month, including a whopping 16 new titles on our schedule for 2014; producing our first-ever mini literary convention next June, the “CCLaP Gathering” which finally collects up all our far-flung authors and staffers into one place for the first time in our history; and sharing more details about a big new student anthology we will be publishing next fall, the first-ever attempt to create a “City All Star” student publication that spreads across all of Chicago’s college campuses. And in the meanwhile, we hope that all of you are having a happy and healthy holiday season.
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