Reflections on AWP ’18

A note from Editor-In-Chief Kaitlyn Andrews-Rice

Dear Reader,

I write to you from 33,000 feet. A jetBlue plane miraculously travels across the ocean and flight attendants are about to serve me a Diet Coke. I say miraculous because all of it feels like an impossiblity: millions of travelers sliding through doors and security lanes to their various destinations, plastic airplane cups filled with seven ice cubes, sweet, stale air, the seatback TV with two working channels (Fox News and the Housewives).

It’s been less than a week since we debuted our very first print issue at AWP in Tampa, another miraculous event. Twelve thousand introverted writers mingling among literary magazines and publishers. A few too many glasses of wine. Far too few hours of sleep.

What does it mean to be a good literary citizen? Is it simply sharing and engaging with work other than your own? Supporting and reading literary magazines? Showing compassion and respect for your fellow writers no matter how big or small?

Here at Split Lip Magazine, being a good literary citizen means supporting all of you. From our readers to our writers, you’ve helped us build a community that goes beyond the traditional editor-publisher-reader paradigm. Too often the literary world separates into Important and Less Important, and it’s easy to feel like you’ll never publish in the right place or know the right person.

This past Friday we held an AWP offsite reading in conjunction with Split Lip Press and Future Tense Books. Under the twinkling lights and the pink Florida sky, I experienced one of the most joyful nights. It’s easy to get jaded sitting alone at your desk, scanning Twitter in rejection despair. It’s hard not to think of success as a finite quantity, where one writer’s book deal means you’ve failed, a sure sign that you’ll spend the rest of your days scheduling social media content for a lady underwear company.

But during our AWP reading, I wasn’t thinking of writing misery. I was thinking of you. 

For reading and for submitting, for writing and for living, for being a part of this thing called Split Lip, thank you, thank you, thank you. 

Yours,

KAR