During turbulent times, a reminder: The ground beneath us has always been shifting.

This issue of The Review Review is being released at a remarkable time here in the United States, where we’re based.

• Global pandemic?
• Most divisive U.S. election season in living memory?
• Editor gets Covid?
• Uncertain economic future due, in large part, to those first two items?

All the checks.

And those highlights say nothing of related and distinct turmoils around the world.

So, what we’re doing here in our humble corner of the web may go unnoticed by writers, readers, and editors who are focused on navigating such turbulence. However, I am excited about what we are offering in this issue.

In many ways, what’s on offer is the same high quality work we’ve tried to offer for years. Sydney Gonzalez reviews Issue 9 of Gold Man Review, which features West Coast writers, alongside an interview with editor Heather Cuthbertson. Gonzaga University senior Bria Peterson has a wonderful review of Creative Nonfiction’s recent “Games” issue, and her classmate Kailin Swift interviews one of Madcap Review’s founders, Craig Ledoux. I also offer a few thoughts on last year’s contest issue from Naugatuck River Review, a journal of narrative verse.

Our Views on Publishing feature is a long time in the making. Dr. Thom Caraway, who teaches at Whitworth University, where he edits Rock & Sling, offers the first installment of what we expect to be a year-long series on the history of little magazines in post-WWII America. I look forward to seeing how this series helps readers and editors understand our current era of litmag production, and for how it invites us to reconceive the work of operations like ours here at The Review Review. Along the way, one thing we’ll certainly learn is that the growth and evolution of literary magazines has always been an effort to reflect and respond to aesthetic, political, and social frictions and fractures. Like so much during this season of tension, a look to the constantly shifting past may offer perspective, if not exactly relief.

I leave you with teases and pleas. We are working on a couple of features for the coming issues, one a roundup of African literary magazines and another focusing on journals that privilege translation. We are also at a point where we can take on additional reviewers and writers, so please email thereviewreview@gonzaga.edu if you are interested in contributing. Also, editors, please add us to your mailing list and we will be happy to get your print issue in our review queue. You can find our mailing address at thereviewreview.net.

I hope you enjoy this issue.

Jeff