A cut-and-paste ode

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

In middle school I bought a metal lunch pail onto which I découpaged images from favorite magazines (Seventeen, Tiger Beat, Teen People etc). Chokers and a-line miniskirts and that guy from the famous sinking ship movie. A cut-and-paste ode to a life I thought I might want.

A collage (from the French coller, literally “to glue”) is a form of art made by sticking various materials onto a backing. It’s re-thinking what already exists and creating a new whole. And what is writing if not its own form of collage? Writers cut and stitch moments, characters, and experiences onto a new world, atmosphere, setting. They reimagine plots from their own lives and the lives of others, trying out how things might have been, how things could have been. By acknowledging what came before, writers focus on what comes next.

With work from Samantha Kimmey, Kim Magowan & Michelle Ross, Kaiya Gordon, and Harrison Geosits, plus (collage!) art by Celina Timmerman, and reviews by Lauren Dostal and James Figy, we’re thinking about writing as collage, characters plus setting plus dialogue plus emotion, until you get the perfect mix, layers upon layers, creating a final image that looks at once familiar and unknown.

—KAR