Last year’s issue of Lit/Pub was about the slow return to a post-Covid world. This year, the initial theme was dreams – time to get on with it and think about the future. But the more we discussed what to put in the issue, the more it became apparent that a lingering wariness was still in the air, even a certain complacency. Hence the exhortatory title – The Wake Up Issue – which Isabella Klepikoff has deftly captured in the design of this year’s cover: a wolf resting by a Roman fountain. He looks to be resting, but his lively green eyes tell us he is stirring back to action.
Liliana Zimberg writes about her congenital inability to dream in her wry and humorous essay. Grace Stathatos is afflicted by the opposite ailment: she lives in a state of confusion because her dreams never leave her – literally. Strange dreams are also at the center of Antonio Fronterrè’s fictional piece, in which a man hopes to improve his dreams with a little brain surgery.
There is still a yearning to keep the past close at hand. Hanna Hadrick lives in Rome but evokes her hometown watering hole with bittersweet fondness. Kyra Berg deals with the grief for the loss of her Chihuahua by having a tattoo etched on her wrist. In her poignant short story, Lucia Guerrieri transforms a past tragedy into myth. And Natalie Cooper tells a funny story about not being enough in the present.
For this year’s poetry section we turned to Madelyn Ferber’s vibrant, rough-edged poems about fitting and mostly not fitting in this world.
And this year’s issue has a new section called Sidetracks. It includes four short, lighthearted sketches from the neighborhood and beyond: Joey Colianni enjoys buying shirts and boxers in a storied shop near the Corso; Tommy Camp takes us on a homesick lunch break at Homebaked; Hope Kan meets the eccentric Miss France; and Gian Carbone takes us out for an evening of Tango.
In the Guest Essay section, Lit/Pub alum Autumn McIntyre gives us a sobering account of life in the real world. She’s doing well “objectively speaking.” Hmm…