News, Notices, Thoughts

January 19, 2012

This issue marks the beginning of our annual publication schedule. In other words, this is the first issue published in more than a year. Yes, it would have been nice to keep with two issues a year, but it just was not possible when it came to resources of time and energy. I hope you will be patient enough to wait the year for each new issue, that you won’t forget about Shipwrights in the mean time. If you’d like to maintain closer contact with the Shipwrights community, I encourage you to join the Facebook group called “Creative Writing Malmö.”

I hope you will enjoy the 2011-2012 issue. I believe you’ll find it to be an entertaining one. Raymond Carver once said, “Just tell the story.” I’ve always interpreted these simple words as a reminder of something obvious yet often neglected in writing communities: that story is the most important element in fictional writing. We even forget that story is the key term in “short story.” It has been said that narrative is one thing that defines us a humans. If this is true, it is no wonder that a short story actually centered on a meaningful story can move us in ways we sometimes forget. Sometimes contemporary fiction writers need to remind themselves that storytelling is at the center of their craft.

To you readers who are not also writers, this may seem like a remarkably obvious, if not wholly stupid, point to make. But you would be surprised how often in creative writing, and also in academic, communities this point is lost in the push to craft elegant sentences, memorable characters, and even striking plots. Yes, the forest is sometimes lost for the trees.

I’m happy to say that in the current issue of Shipwrights, story is alive and well, in both the fiction and in the one nonfiction selection. I hope you will agree. I also hope the poetry in this issue will move you. Perhaps there’s less narrative power in that form, very generally speaking, but I believe it is made up for in the potency of image. Oh, I could go on about narrative force in poetry, too, but that’s probably best left for a lecture, or a conversation accompanied by good wine. Now, I hope you’ll open a good bottle, yourself, and get down to the 2011-2012 issue.

Darius 

 March 15, 2011

Shipwrights has changed its publication schedule. We are now an annual magazine. The next issue will be published early in 2012. This change was made due to budgetary and staffing considerations. It will also give us a yet larger body of submissions to choose from for each issue.

Unfortunately, this means there will be no Spring 2011 issue. 

Please keep those submissions coming! We look forward to reading your work and considering it for publication.