Welcome to Bloodroot vol. 8, our first digital edition!
Click here to download a printable PDF version. If you want to print a chapbook you can download this PDF version and print double-sided (duplex) then fold along the center line and staple.
When we put out a call and held our first revival meeting and reading at Left Bank Books in Hanover, NH, no one knew who would show up or what this would turn into. Ivy, Phyllis and I designed our digital edition using a radically inclusive strategy. What started as a print literary magazine has evolved into an author platform designed to build a community. I am hopeful Bloodroot will grow and change, rooting down into the Upper Valley community and blooming into the digital literary scene. Thank you for sending us work, coming out to Left Bank, championing poetry and literary fiction, and reading this smorgasbord offering. I hope you cherish it as much as I do.
This first on-line issue of Bloodroot has been a long time in the making. It has been over two years since the magazine’s founder “Do” Roberts died suddenly just after the 7th edition had arrived from the printer. There was enthusiastic support for the idea of continuing the magazine from many of its writers, but it became clear that no one of us was prepared to give the time or financial support that “Do” and her co-editor Deloris Netzband had done. Eventually the three editors of this 2016 issues patched together times to meet and work to revive the magazine as an on-line journal. We have learned a great deal about how this should best be done in the actual doing of it; we know that future editors will post a clear and concise list of requirements and expectations from submitters, and we hope that there will in the future be yearly editions. We know that the contents of this first issue are diverse in content and craft, and as the magazine grows, so will the expectations and goals of the editors change. We hope that you will be pleased with this on-line Bloodroot and that you will continue to offer your best work to it.
This inaugural online edition of Bloodroot gives me joy and hope. Joy in seeing “Do” Roberts’ late-in-life mission to support writers in the Upper Valley revived and given a sleek new and, we hope, sustainable, form by our web guru, Rena Mosteirin, who is no slouch in the writing department either, and will be starting an MFA at Bennington College this summer. Congrats, Rena! Joy in seeing the indefatigable work of Phyllis Katz on behalf of Bloodroot come to fruition. For over two years, Phyllis has cast about for a way to feed the flame that “Do” and Delores Netzband kindled, organizing meetings, sending out emails and letters, chatting up publishers, insisting that we could find a way to make this revival work. And with an infusion of Rena’s can-do spirit, we did. Phyllis’ faith in the power of poetry and in the value of this project has buoyed us; this would not have happened without her. This issue gives me joy because of the superlative poetry and short fiction it offers. We accepted at least one piece from everyone who submitted work because our goal is to build community around the arts and around poetry in particular. We recognize that an online publication will flourish only if it nourishes the community of writers and readers it also helps to develop. It was thrilling to receive submissions from so many wonderful writers, whose work I have known and admired over the years or have just come to admire and look forward to seeing more of in the future. Finally, this issue gives me hope because of the wide ranger of writers it encompasses, from well-known and well published writers to local and yet unsung wordsmiths; from a teacher of poetry who has just joined the Dartmouth Creative Writing faculty, to an undergraduate student in her Fall 2015 poetry class, the youngest writer in the group. That poetry continues to inspire and delight the upcoming generations as it sustains so many of us gives me joy and hope.
Click on a name to learn more about our contributors: