EDITORS’ NOTE
PETER LABERGE
FOUNDER & EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
GARRETT BIGGS
MANAGING EDITOR
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It’s August 21st, and we are watching a swarm of bodies cover their eyes with cardboard glasses, chins tilted upward at the sky. This is Colorado, a little less than a hundred miles south of totality; this is Northern California, where—despite the eclipse—the same daily fog rolls like music into the grey sky. If you weren’t aware of the eclipse, you might not notice any difference in the sky at all.
Suffice it to say that lately, we’ve been thinking a lot about mystery. How strange it is, by principle, to watch strangers stand elbow-to-elbow, gasping together at the arc of the moon, something which—when seen from a slightly different perspective—has suddenly become inextricably yet ephemerally awe-inspiring. At the same time, it seems, the world around us is clearer then ever. Bitter hatred and resentment is roiling from coast to coast, and there’s no shortage of tragic terrorist events abroad to keep us reeling.
The world’s seam is torn—that’s hardly mysterious. The world is hemorrhaging in a windowless room, with little sign of stopping.
In this world, the sitting President of the United States has refused to unequivocally condemn white supremacists and neo-Nazis, and Planned Parenthood has been jeopardized, even though none of its federal funding is allocated to abortions. In this world, people running major American departments believe that homosexuality leads to pedophilia and can be cured with conversion therapy and prayer—or, worse, violence. In this world, people equate outrage and fear, and think of privilege as yet another liberal myth.
Even if Tina Fey’s recent and controversial SNL “sheetcaking” skit is satire, it still isn’t enough. It’s not enough to condemn, to mock. We must also offer a solution, a proposed plan. A plan to resist if we’re able, to speak out if we’re able, a plan to write and write and write.
We hope you’ll enjoy the (in our opinion, stunning) artistry in our newest issue. We hope you’ll locate and access the pain and turn it into energy—energy to change the world around us, to help save the world around us from itself.
Welcome to Adroit 22.
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Peter LaBerge‘s most recent work appears in Best New Poets, Crazyhorse, Harvard Review, Iowa Review, Pleiades, Tin House, and elsewhere. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of the Adroit Journal, and is the recipient of a fellowship from the Bucknell University Stadler Center for Poetry. He recently graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with his B.A. in English, and currently lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Garrett Biggs grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. His most recent prose has appeared in CutBank, Nashville Review, New South, Paper Darts, and Amazon Publishing’s Day One, among other publications. He is a recent graduate of the University of Denver, where he received a B.A in English (Creative Writing), and was a recipient of the Olna Fant Cook Award, as well as Honors Distinction in fiction writing. In the fall of 2017, he will begin pursuing his M.F.A in Fiction at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he was awarded the John F. Barker Memorial Fellowship, and will serve as a creative writing instructor for the next three years.
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