Welcome to our fall issue of Good River Review. This second installment makes us a genuine going concern.
In the midst of our current and many madnesses, the division caused by the politicizing of the pandemic, school board violence, the blood sport of our country’s politics, and our looming climate crisis, our editorial team has been working hard to curate this issue of Good River.
The confluence of keeping up with the news and putting together our second issue only further satisfies me that art, particularly literature, continues to be one of the few things that truly matters, providing a much-needed catalyst for honest discussion about the human condition.
Our editorial team is delighted to bring you work that we think matters, lyric and prose that pushes against the boundaries of genres as we’ve known them. We’re publishing all sorts of fiction including flash, short fiction, and an excerpt from a novel. The poetry in this issue includes work by well-known poet Kiki Petrosino, the 2021 winner of our Spalding Prize for the Promotion of Peace and Justice in Literature, as well as a poem by Jacob Harris, an undergraduate student at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky.
We’re also happy to connect you with our associate editor Katy Yocom’s interview with Robert Barry Fleming of Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, a conversation that reveals “an artistic director ready to expand the concept of storytelling beyond the limits of live theater—and to upend old models of how theater works.” In another interview, Katy also provides an inside look at the making of Skye Wallin’s first feature film, the documentary American Gadfly, which focuses on retired Senator Mike Gravel and issues of “peace, capitalism, and direct democracy.”
In addition to publishing top-notch lyric and prose, we’re pleased to support our literary community with news of work you may not have discovered yet, including a review of Jayne Moore Waldrop’s linked story collection Drowned Town and capsules of prize-winning works of translation and a middle-grade novel and picture books.
Thanks to all the writers who allowed us to include them in Good River-Issue Two. And as always, I’m grateful to our editors and graduate assistant editors, who have put in many hours, often at the expense of their own writing, to bring this issue to our readers.
After you’ve read this issue of Good River Review, if you think we can provide a good home for your work, we welcome your submissions, particularly if your writing can’t be tucked neatly into one genre.
Enjoy!
Kathleen Driskell
Editor in Chief
Good River Review