from the publisher

"It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there/”

—William Carlos Williams

"Poetry is news that stays news"

—Ezra

Pound

Literary magazines help to fill the gaps left by the nation’s media, thanks to the keen observers of the outside world who are often put off by what is found in the day-to-day news coverage. That said, I’ve redirected my sustaining donation earmarked for National Public Radio to literary magazines that continuously publish the “news that stays news.”

Recovering after going downhill with an early heart attack has brought me a new heightened awareness that allows me to see those who really matter are already with me on Raleigh Review and in life. This new focus also helps me to really see and appreciate those who’ve been with me for much of the last several decades along with those who came to help, whether it was an offer of timely advice or just showing up with food for my rather large and young family.

Dear poets and writers of this issue, I challenge you to send an initial or a second note of thanks to the team members who assisted you through the process from acceptance to copyediting your work to the galley phase to you now being one of our very own contributors. Reach out to our team members to thank them for not only your benefit, but for all those who’ll come after you. Thank and befriend our dear readers as well who are really your first domino to acceptance in Raleigh Review. We solicit, like, zilch of the work included in these issues so you should be proud that your work has made it through to this point based on the merit of the writing and on your talent.

Dear subscribers, thank you. I encourage you to follow the careers of the writers and poets from our pages who inspire you. Reach out to them to let them know if their work has influenced you in some way, not only those works that entertain you, but also those works that challenge you.

Bob Marley once said, “Truth is, everyone’s going to hurt you, you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for.” With that, my hat is off to our team over the last few decades who are helping us build Raleigh Review. Some have moved on to other roles and responsibilities within our community of writers. Some have changed paths entirely.

The physical action of progressing and helping those we invest time and effort in as they move on to their next round of hopes and dreams is part of what makes organizations like ours successful, so there’s never any harm when we lose someone we helped in their transition from one place in their life to the next. This is a very welcome occurrence that comes when you’re both kind and generous. It doesn’t matter if you are an individual or an organization, it’s just part of the process.

That’s enough for me for now. It’s time to get back to work here. There’s life yet to live, and there’s always something new to read for our small though mighty magazine, Raleigh Review, so let’s get to it, shall we? ◆

Rob Greene, publisher

colin bailes holds an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, where he served as the 2020–2021 Levis Reading Prize Fellow and was awarded the Catherine and Joan Byrne Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Cortland Review, Meridian, Missouri Review, Subtropics, and wildness, among other journals. He lives and teaches in Gainesville, Florida.

nora beers kelly (Illustrator at Raleigh Review) is from Montreal, Quebec. Her notable clients include Concordia University, Plateau Astro, Temps Libres, The Tyee, The New York Times, and many other establishments.

allison blevins is the author of the collections Handbook for the Newly Disabled, A Lyric Memoir (BlazeVox, 2022), Slowly/Suddenly (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2021), and four chapbooks. Allison is the Director of Small Harbor Publishing and the Executive Editor at the museum of americana. http://www.allisonblevins.com.

mary buchinger is the author of five poetry collections, including /kla ädz/ (2021), einf√ºhlung/in feeling (2018), and VIROLOGY (forthcoming). She serves on the New England Poetry Club board and teaches at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in Boston, Massachusetts.

caroline chavatel is the author of White Noises (Greentower Press, 2019), which won The Laurel Review‚ 2018 Midwest Chapbook Contest. Her work has appeared in AGNI, The Missouri Review, Foundry, and Poetry Northwest, among others. She is co-founding editor of The Shore, an editor at Madhouse Press, and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Georgia State University.

julia kolchinsky dasbach emigrated from Ukraine as a Jewish refugee at age six. She is author of the collections The Many Names for Mother, Don’t Touch the Bones, and 40 WEEKS (YesYes Books, 2023). Dr. Dasbach is Murphy Visiting Fellow in Poetry at Hendrix College and lives in Little Rock, Arkansas.

joshua davis is the author Reversal Spells in Blue and Black (Seven Kitchens Press, forthcoming) and Chorus for the Kill (Seven Kitchens Press, 2022). He holds an MFA from Stonecoast and from the University of Mississippi. He offers online workshops at The Poetry Barn and teaches high school English near Tampa, Florida.

gregory djanikian has published seven collections of poetry with Carnegie Mellon, the latest of which is Sojourners of the In-Between (2020). His poems have appeared in numerous journals including American Poetry Review, Boulevard, New Ohio Review, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, TriQuarterly, among others, and in many anthologies and textbooks.

j.r. evans lives and works in Alaska.

grace ezra (formerly Sutphin) is originally from Greenville, South Carolina, but currently lives in Louisville, Kentucky. She was awarded second place in Sarabande Books' 2020 Flo Gault Poetry Prize, and fourth place in the second annual Poetry Derby hosted at Churchill Downs. Her work has been previously published in Poet Lore, Salt Hill Journal, and elsewhere.

loisa fenichell’s work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and has been featured or is forthcoming in Guernica Magazine, Narrative Magazine, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. She is currently an MFA candidate at Columbia University.

c. francis fisher is a poet, translator, and movement artist based in Brooklyn. Her writings have appeared or are forthcoming in the Arkansas International, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Los Angeles Review of Books among other publications. Her poem, “Self-Portrait at 25” was selected as the winner for the 2021 Academy of American Poets Prize at Columbia University. She teaches undergraduate composition at Columbia University.

erica jenks henry grew up in Bangkok, Thailand, but currently lives in Chicago, where she raises children and works in public health. Her writing has appeared in Jellyfish Review, Lumiere Review, Oyster River Pages, Pithead Chapel, Lit Hub, Zone 3, and elsewhere.

katherine joshi teaches writing at the University of Maryland, where she received her MFA in fiction writing in 2014. Her fiction has appeared in Big Muddy and Glasschord. Originally from Tennessee, she now lives in Northern Virginia with her husband, son, and nearly toothless cat.

stephanie kaylor is Reviews Editor at Glass: A Journal of Poetry. She is completing her Ph.D. at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and curates the Sex Workers’ Archival Project. She lives in Brooklyn.

peter laberge is the founder and editor-inchief of The Adroit Journal, as well as an MFA candidate and Writers in the Public Schools Fellow at New York University. His poetry has received a Pushcart Prize and appeared in AGNI, Crazyhorse, Kenyon Review, New England Review, and Pleiades, among others.

justin lacour lives in New Orleans and edits Trampoline: A Journal of Poetry. He is the author of My Heart is Shaped Like a Bed: 46 Sonnets (Fjords 2022).

andrea lewis writes short fiction and essays from her home in Seattle, Washington. Her work has appeared in over thirty literary journals, and her collection of linked stories, What My Last Man Did, was published by Indiana University Press Find her on Twitter @AndreaCLewis.

cass lintz earned her BA from Mills College in Oakland, California. Currently, she's an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of North Carolina Wilmington where she serves as poetry editor for Ecotone magazine. Her work has previously appeared in Rough Cut Press and The Walrus Literary Journal.

caroline mccoy's writing has appeared in The Georgia Review, Blackbird Journal, Juked Magazine, Electric Literature, The Bitter Southerner, and other places. She earned her BA from the University of North Carolina and her MFA from Emerson College. She lives and works in Savannah, Georgia.

owen mcleod is author of the poetry collections Dream Kitchen, which won the Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry, and Before After, forthcoming from Saturnalia Books. His poems appear in Copper Nickel, New England Review, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. He teaches philosophy at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania.

john salter is the author of Alberta Clipper and A Trout in the Sea of Cortez. Purple Sage, his new story collection, is forthcoming from Slant Books. His short fiction has appeared in Massachusetts Review, Chattahoochee Review, Third Coast, Florida Review, Meridian, and elsewhere. He lives in North Dakota.

mackenzie sanders is a fiction writer from Arizona. She received her bachelor's degree in English from the University of Arizona in 2020 and is a creative writing MFA candidate at Sarah Lawrence College. Her work is forthcoming in Passengers Journal.

Nominated for Best New Poets and winner of New South journal's prose prize, anne dyer stuart's publications include AGNI, Cherry Tree, American Journal of Poetry, and The Texas Review. What Girls Learn (Finishing Line Press 2021) was a finalist for Comstock Review’s 2020 Chapbook Contest. She teaches at Bloomsburg University.