You Can’t Live a Full Life Without a Little Change
by Jason Sanford
The second oldest cliché about life—right after that old saw about death being the only sure cure for all the problems of life—is that change happens. If you want to live, you must keep changing. You can't grow without changing. If you stop changing, well, then you're back to a certain abrupt cure mentioned in the first cliché of life.
Seven years ago, Jake Adam York and I founded storySouth to highlight the great literature that was coming out of the New South. Along the way we were joined by poetry editor Dan Albergotti and fiction editor Scott Yarbrough. I couldn't have asked for a better group of people to share seven years of my life.
While storySouth wasn't the first online literary journal, it was one of those that proved you could published great literature online. Over the years fiction, poetry, and nonfiction from our virtual pages have won a number of awards and been reprinted in quite a few anthologies (most recently Best American Poetry 2008 and Best of the Web 2008). Our Million Writers Award for best online fiction is about to enter its sixth year, and seems to grow more popular each time around.
But despite these successes, the feeling among the storySouth editors was that our beloved journal wasn't living up to its full potential. There was so much more that the journal could be doing, but the simple fact was that none of us had the time to help the journal reach this potential. This lack of time was evident in our publishing schedule of late, which has been, well, late.
So it is that on the seventh anniversary of storySouth's founding, I am pleased to announce a major change in the journal. From this point on, the four main editors of storySouth are stepping aside. In addition, I will no longer be the publisher of storySouth.
The new publisher will be Spring Garden Press, a well-regarded literary publisher in Greensboro, North Carolina. storySouth's new editor will be Terry Kennedy, the Associate Director of the MFA Writing Program at UNCG Greensboro and the editor of Spring Garden Press. Joining him as fiction editor will be Drew Perry, a UNCG alum who teaches fiction writing at Elon University; as poetry editor Julie Funderburk, who previously served as one of storySouth's associate editors; as designer Andrew Saulters, who created the websites for the UNCG MFA Program, The Greensboro Review, and Spring Garden Press.
All of the current storySouth editors will remain involved in the journal in different ways—for example, I will continue to direct our Million Writers Award—but the journal will now be run by Terry and his crew. I'm really excited about the skills and abilities Terry and Spring Garden Press bring to storySouth., and I know they will continue the journal's mission of publishing the best writings from the New South.
In celebration of this change, this issue of storySouth highlights the best writings from our first seven years. Early next year, Terry and his team will launch their first all-new issue. I look forward to seeing the exciting new writings and authors they publish.
So there it is: change is in the air, carried on that stereotypical but still oh so lovely Southern breeze. But this change will ensure that storySouth keeps on growing—and keeps on reaching for its full potential.
Sincerely,
Jason Sanford
Founding editor and former publisher
storySouth
Seven years ago, Jake Adam York and I founded storySouth to highlight the great literature that was coming out of the New South. Along the way we were joined by poetry editor Dan Albergotti and fiction editor Scott Yarbrough. I couldn't have asked for a better group of people to share seven years of my life.
While storySouth wasn't the first online literary journal, it was one of those that proved you could published great literature online. Over the years fiction, poetry, and nonfiction from our virtual pages have won a number of awards and been reprinted in quite a few anthologies (most recently Best American Poetry 2008 and Best of the Web 2008). Our Million Writers Award for best online fiction is about to enter its sixth year, and seems to grow more popular each time around.
But despite these successes, the feeling among the storySouth editors was that our beloved journal wasn't living up to its full potential. There was so much more that the journal could be doing, but the simple fact was that none of us had the time to help the journal reach this potential. This lack of time was evident in our publishing schedule of late, which has been, well, late.
So it is that on the seventh anniversary of storySouth's founding, I am pleased to announce a major change in the journal. From this point on, the four main editors of storySouth are stepping aside. In addition, I will no longer be the publisher of storySouth.
The new publisher will be Spring Garden Press, a well-regarded literary publisher in Greensboro, North Carolina. storySouth's new editor will be Terry Kennedy, the Associate Director of the MFA Writing Program at UNCG Greensboro and the editor of Spring Garden Press. Joining him as fiction editor will be Drew Perry, a UNCG alum who teaches fiction writing at Elon University; as poetry editor Julie Funderburk, who previously served as one of storySouth's associate editors; as designer Andrew Saulters, who created the websites for the UNCG MFA Program, The Greensboro Review, and Spring Garden Press.
All of the current storySouth editors will remain involved in the journal in different ways—for example, I will continue to direct our Million Writers Award—but the journal will now be run by Terry and his crew. I'm really excited about the skills and abilities Terry and Spring Garden Press bring to storySouth., and I know they will continue the journal's mission of publishing the best writings from the New South.
In celebration of this change, this issue of storySouth highlights the best writings from our first seven years. Early next year, Terry and his team will launch their first all-new issue. I look forward to seeing the exciting new writings and authors they publish.
So there it is: change is in the air, carried on that stereotypical but still oh so lovely Southern breeze. But this change will ensure that storySouth keeps on growing—and keeps on reaching for its full potential.
Sincerely,
Jason Sanford
Founding editor and former publisher
storySouth