Editor’s Note

Dear reader,

Here in Vermont, spring is as much about hope as it is about controlling expectations. You plan your routes around dirt roads that may or may not have turned to impassable mud pits. It’s bikini weather one day and a blizzard the next. Still, you start seeds. You move toward life with care, realism. As the pandemic enters its second year, and as we rise on the heels of justice for George Floyd, this rhythm is educational.

In the seventh issue of Mount Island, we feature the dazzling paintings of Jane Ryder and the work of two exceptional poets, Despy Boutris and Alexa Garvoille. After a dry spell for prose, we are thrilled to feature flash fiction with Quinton Lawrence’s “Integration, KS (1963),” a raw and powerful story of a boy getting ready for school.

Last, an important note about Mount Island’s future. Starting with our next issue, we will no longer be publishing a digital quarterly. Instead, we will release an annual magazine in both print and digital. This new schedule and format will better enable our small staff to craft mighty issues for our small and necessary niche, while fulfilling our pre-pandemic goal of moving into print. We will no longer be selling subscriptions in our current form, and current subscribers will receive free copies of the next issue, which will be released in the fall of 2021.

Huzzah!

Desmond Peeples