Why We Like It

From Julianna Baggott‘s essay “My Mother in Her Mail-Order Scott Paper Company Dress: A Portrait of Intergenerational Neuroses” (10.1), we learned . . . well, first of all, that paper dresses exist. Or rather that they existed, er, before all those women caught on fire. Perhaps more to the point, we learned how this sartorial …

You’ve heard the expression Laughter is the best medicine. A look around the CR office would suggest that we rely on Laffy Taffy to cure most of our ills. But jokes and candy (and candy with jokes!) aren’t the only things that make us feel better when we’re feeling worse. Author Jeanette Winterson told a …

The term has officially begun. That means we here at the mag are reuniting our posteriors with the loving impressions they long ago made in our chairs. Though the office is taking some getting used to, our reading period isn’t. It began earlier this month—August 15, to be exact. So we’re already in the thick …

We’re sad to say goodbye to our hardy, super-duper volunteer Lisa Summe—who just graduated with an MA in creative writing from UC and is headed to Virginia Tech for an MFA in the fall. Our loss is their gain. The office won’t be the same without her brightly colored clothing, strong work ethic, and trenchant …

Nicola Mason: As they say in the auction world when something is about to go, Fair warning! In this case, our Submission Manger is about to go offline  for the usual issue-filling bits of poetry and prose. If you want to shoot us something for consideration, do it this weekend.  The hammer falls on April …

As you will discover in her appreciation below, editorial assistant Jessica Brown is an intrepid and fearless traveler. She name-drops countries like rappers mention name brands. Argentina? Boom. J. Brown has been there. You want to know about Ghana? Hold those horses. J. Brown can tell you all about it. Based on our extensive Facebook-stalking …

Of all our volunteers, Lisa Summe has the best collection of pants. She’ll tell you herself: she owns more than twenty pairs. What we haven’t yet shared on the blog is Lisa’s love of opening new batches of submissions. She gets crazy excited when she sees a big stack of envelopes and, when assigned mail …

Last time CR Editorial Assistant Sara Watson wrote a blogpost for us, we highlighted her biography, which mirrored—to a remarkable degree—that of a certain Hollywood actor. Since then, we’ve learned that she also writes a mean ekphrastic poem, runs half-marathons, and loves her wiener-dog mix, whom she sometimes dresses in tuxedos. We don’t hold this …