Dear Readers,

We didn’t know exactly what to expect when we released our first issue. Would people find it? Or read it? Would the work resonate for others the same way it did (and does) for us? 

To our delight: yes and yes and yes. 

While we are excited enough about The Swannanoa Review to have kept it going even if we were the only ones reading it, we’ll admit it does feel gratifying to see the poems we had the pleasure of publishing in Issue 1 widely shared and loved. And to all of you who came to (and wouldn’t leave…) the launch party at The Poetry Society of America—thank you! And to those of you who couldn’t attend—don’t worry, we’ll have more events. 

And this brings us to Issue 2. We are thrilled—and a bit overwhelmed—to have received nearly twice the number of submissions as we did for the debut issue. That has allowed us to venture into exciting new territory for TSR: a few multi-page poems (with subjects spanning the creation of linen thread to an encounter with a condemned school building), a first flash fiction piece, a co-authored work, and a beautiful English translation of a Spanish poem called, fittingly, “Readers.” 

So, dear readers: In all, Issue 2 houses 23 works—poems, short stories, and a few pieces living somewhere in the invigorating land of “in-between.” We’re grateful to include the work of two wonderful Warren Wilson faculty members: poets Daisy Fried and Christine Kitano. Like last time, we’ve ordered these works to be read as the Table of Contents suggests. And we hope you’ll read the whole thing from digital cover to digital cover. 

Thank you to everyone who submitted such strong work (which made our task of decision making even harder than last time) and to our team of readers for this issue: Jason Bowman, Georgia M. Brodsky, Drew Coles, Madison Cyr, Eli Karen, Nathaniel Moore, and Jacob Sheetz-Willard. 

Thank you for choosing to spend some of your summer with us.

And without further ado—Issue 2 of the Swannanoa Review. 

(Yes, that was a triple rhyme.) 

Happy reading,

Reed Turchi & Kate Welsh

Founding Editors