Volume 16, Issue 3 – Fall 2022

Welcome to the Fall 2022 issue of Wordgathering—Volume 16, Issue 3 (aka Issue 63).

As Editor-in-Chief, I am grateful for ongoing and outstanding collaborative support from my esteemed colleagues at Syracuse University, Patrick Williams and Steve Kuusisto. Thanks, too, to Dr. Kate Deibel for behind-the-scenes creative labors to ensure and advance Wordgathering‘s accessibility and impact.

Immense gratitude goes, as always, to our exemplary editorial team: Assistant Editor, Rachael Zubal-Ruggieri; Flash Memoir Editor, Dan Simpson; Gatherer’s Blog Editor, Ona Gritz; Prose Editor, Sean J. Mahoney; Poetry Editor, Emily K. Michael; and Special Guest Editor, Kenny Fries. With this issue, we happily welcome Kate Champlin to the editorial team. Kate joins us as our new Assistant Book Reviews Editor. Thanks, Kate, for being part of our crew!

Each issue, we have more requests for book reviews and now have a long “queue” from authors and creatives across the globe. If you would like to help out with the journal’s fantastic book reviews adventure, please reach out to us! Some day, it will happen that we we can compensate our contributors. Unfortunately, at the present time, all we can do is offer you some “Crip Fame” (and a lot of gratitude) as a book reviewer for Wordgathering.

This year, we were able to participate in the Best of the Net nominations process. I’m pleased to share that esteemed contributors Meg Day and Ekiwah Adler-Beléndez both had their work nominated by our editorial team for the 2022 Best of the Net anthology.

Wordgathering has rejoined the Poets & Writers interface (though more updating is clearly needed!) and is reconnected, too, with Duotrope. As I happily discovered, Wordgathering has also been included as a resource on the Inklusion Guide‘s site.

Our talented and humble editorial team continues to engage with various creative projects beyond Wordgathering‘s landscapes, seascapes, and garlic scapes. I’m happy to share, among other well-deserved accolades, that Ona Gritz has a forthcoming book, August or Forever, geared to meet the reading needs and interests of young folx; Kenny Fries has been hard at work at a new exhibit, “Queering the Crip, Cripping the Queer,” housed in Berlin; and Emily K. Michael co-authored the first chapter in Picture a Professor: Interrupting Biases about Faculty and Increasing Student Learning, now out from West Virginia University Press.

P. F. Anderson, Susanne Paola Antonetta, Kate Champlin, Dana Cloud, Jennifer Henley, Stephen Kuusisto, Michael Northen, Katherine Osabe, Rachael Zubal-Ruggieri, and I provided book reviews for Issue 63. In myriad ways, the authors of the 12 texts that were reviewed for this issue address both the impact associated with and the ongoing necessity of actively undermining racism, ableism, queerphobia, and xenophobia, and the interconnections between these and other forms of oppression. New poetry by Allison Blevins, Stephanie Heit, Mel Mallory, Michèle Saint-Yves, Kelly Sargent, and Diane R. Wiener is in company with Allison’s Carey groundbreaking textbook on the sociology of disability; Sonya Huber’s “memoir of a day;” James Kyung-Jin Lee’s powerful analysis of a “model minority”; Rosaleen McDonagh’s essays on community, friendship, and resistance; Akemi Nishida’s critique and elaboration of care works; and Alice Wong’s widely acclaimed activist memoir.

This issue’s Gatherer’s Blog, “A Version of Writing Neuroqueerly,” was written by Nathan Spoon. Nathan’s stellar work in this issue includes a poem–shared in print and audio recorded by Nathan–with Nathan’s supplemental audio commentary transcribed. The powerful Reading Loop, “Reflections on Transportation (In)accessibility in Nepal,” was written by first-year undergraduate student, Bibhuti Shah. As always, the Reading Loop and the Gatherer’s Blog are invited contributions, and I thank Nathan and Bibhuti for their beautiful work.

The poems “In the bewitched aviary” by Pawel Markiweicz and “Fireflies” by Roy Wahlberg were audio recorded by me. Other poems were audio recorded by the poets, themselves.

Veterans Day occurred as we were finalizing this fall issue. We underscore and honor the complex ways in which Disablement is connected with war, service, and courage (but this assertion is shared without celebrating inspoporn, since that is not how we roll here at the journal).

If you haven’t already done so, we encourage you to check out the #BorgDiem initiative, courtesy of our badass Crip friend, The Cyborg Jillian Weise.

Wishing you and “yours” a meaningful change of the seasons.

Thank you for your ongoing engagement with and commitment to Wordgathering. I hope that you enjoy and find good company in our autumnal issue.

Quoting my beloved friend, Amy Adina Schulman (12/23/1965 – 11/13/1986), “Peace, Love, and Granola.”

—Diane R. Wiener, Editor-in-Chief

Underlined content throughout Wordgathering is hyperlinked (each underlined element is a clickable link), leading to further aspects of the content shared. Any questions about accessibility can be addressed by emailing us at: wordgathering@syr.edu.

Please note that the opinions and perspectives shared by our contributors (in their published work or elsewhere) do not necessarily align with or reflect the opinions and perspectives held by the members of the journal’s editorial and administrative team.