CO-EDITORS-IN-CHIEF KRISTIN HOULIHAN & MELISSA ROTERT
Epistemic Literary was born with a tweet on May 9th of this year: “I so badly want to read submissions and curate a beautiful publication but I 100% do not have the spoons to start my own litmag,” Melissa replied, “Maybe we could get a group of us to share the spoon load,” and our journey began. I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve built in less than three months, and blown away by the support we’ve received from the writing community: the amazing authors who have trusted us with their work, fellow litmags offering advice and extending our reach, and you, our readers, spending time with the words we’ve so carefully built into our inaugural issue.
I know I speak for both of us when I say I was blown away by the submissions we received, and I am so grateful for the opportunity to publish and champion the writing of the 16 contributors to Issue 1. Our goals for Epistemic Literary are to foster community through mutual understanding by presenting a diverse collection of writing; for this particular issue, we were looking for poetry and fiction that reflected on the theme of food. We wanted writing that works to create questions about the role of food in our lives, cultures, and experiences. I hope you’ll agree that we’ve achieved that in this first installment.
So, take some time to read and digest these stories and poems. I hope they touch you as they’ve touched us. Seek out our contributors on social media or via their websites and support their other endeavors. Shout their praises from the rooftops with us!
I will close with a thank you, to all of our submitters and especially to our first 16 contributors: thank you again for your passion and creativity, without which we would not be here.
– Kristin Houlihan, Co-founder and EIC, Poetry