Issue 141
Winter & Spring 2012
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Welcome to the fourth issue of TriQuarterly Online. We are excited to present our first-ever collection of video essays, curated by accomplished video essayists John Bresland and Marilyn Freeman. We also have fiction from Bonnie Nadzam who recently received the the 2011 Center for Fiction's Flaherty Dunnan First Novel Prize for LAMB (Other Press, 2011). We are excited to showcase translated pieces from two international contributors. The first is prominent, Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan. His work was translated from Arabic by Fady Joudah who also has poetry in this issue. The second is a short story from prolific Senegalese writer Boubacar Boris Diop. Finally, we have some new, young voices that we are eager to share. Please enjoy these writers as well as the rest of our outstanding new fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. We look forward to receiving your comments at triquarterlyonline@northwestern.edu.
EDITOR’S NOTE
One could argue that text, onscreen, feathered with images and sound, is becoming more like video. And video is becoming more like text. How are writers to contend with this? How does the visceral nature of digital technology—sound, image and the sometimes cruel edgelessness of the screen—alter the writer’s relationship to language? The seven video essays in this collection, curated by John Bresland and Marilyn Freeman, raise a host of thrilling questions, not least: How is writing today different than it was yesterday? What does it mean for writers to build a text with, as Virginia Woolf once cannily advised, whatever pieces come your way?
Managing Editor: Amanda Morris
Faculty Advisor: Susan Harris
Copy Editor: Ruth Goring
Graduate Fellow: Ben Schacht
Book Review Editors: Karen Zemanick, Leigh Arber
Fiction Editors: Matt Carmichael, Schuyler Dickson, Cathy Gao, Tedd Hawks, Sarah Kalsbeek, Ankur Thakkar, Stephanie Tran
Nonfiction Editor: Sarah Hollenbeck
Poetry Editor: Lana Rakhman
Chapbook Review Editor: Anthony Opal
Art Director: Patrick Allen Carberry
Staff: Emily Ayshford, Rebecca Bald, Danielle Burhop, Michelle Cabral, Matt Carmichael, Jen Companik, Vincent Francone, Cathy Gao, Amanda Gebhardt, Barbara Ghoshal, Eric Grawe, Dane Hamann, Noelle Havens, Elizabeth Herbert, Russ Hicks, Gretchen Kalwinski, Adam Kovac, Nath Jones, Jen Lawrence, Eldad Malamuth, Carrie Muehle, Dana Norris, Tien (Mimi) Nguyen, Hana Park, Cory Phare, Lydia Pudzianowski, Nate Renie, Mark Rentfro, Paula Root, Tal Rosenberg, Virginia Smith, Megan Marie Sullivan, Amanda Tague, and Myra Thompson
Why to Read this Short Nonfiction Account of the Writer Himself
You may not get what the relevance is here, why you are being told what you have not yet been told about someone you have not yet met, and if this is the case, I ask only that you note that the Writer Himself will suffer the same perplexity…
Cello
I.
A mutant violin, the poet Adam Zagajewski calls it, in the poem named for the instrument. It’s been kicked out of the chorus, he says, its low tones not quite right, too close to a sob. Sitting here in the dark-wooded reading room of the local public library, where thick shades blot out the light that should be heralding morning, I am struck by my need for the poem.