Volume 19, Issue 1 – Summer 2025

Welcome to the Summer 2025 issue of Wordgathering. We appreciate your patience in awaiting this issue’s arrival in the digital world and beyond. This issue—our 69th—marks the beginning of the 19th volume of the journal. As Editor-in-Chief, I am grateful for ongoing and outstanding collaborative support from my esteemed colleagues at Syracuse University, Patrick Williams, Dylan Mohr, and Steve Kuusisto. Thanks, too, to Dr. Kate Deibel for her past role in supporting Wordgathering‘s accessibility and engagement.

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; Poetry Editor, Emily K. Michael; Prose Editor, Sean J. Mahoney; and Assistant Book Reviews Editor, Kate Champlin. And thanks, forever and always, to our Special Guest Editor (2020-2023), Kenny Fries.

This issue’s Gatherer’s Blog was written by Elisa Friedlander. The issue’s Reading Loop was written by Yema Yang. Friedlander articulates the complex, compelling, “love story” of connectedness she finds in her writing life in relation to disablement, imagination, and—of course (!)—creativity. Yang, a “second-generation, queer, disabled Myanmar woman living in the so-called United States,” deconstructs and reflects upon their nuanced relationship with Western epistemological paradigms, poesis, and disablement. I’m particularly pleased that Yema shared one of their stunning poems with us, as well.

Allison Carey, Kate Champlin, Ona Gritz, Diana M. Katovitch, Matthew Konerth, Michael Northen, Serafina Paladino, Rachael Zubal-Ruggieri, and Emily Skadorwa contributed a total of 13 stellar book reviews to this issue. If you would like to join our book reviewers’ team, please write to me at wordgathering@syr.edu. Unfortunately, at the present time, we do not have funds to compensate any of our contributors—including reviewers.

The poems “Backyard by Ear” by Emily K. Michael, “Sympathetic Resonance” by Nancy Scott, “Mother and Child” and “Coda: Flowers in Silk Sunlight” by Lynn Strongin, and “Ritalin Nation” and “Requiem for My Grandfather” by Natalie Weis were audio recorded by me. Other poems were audio recorded by the poets themselves.

Approximately one month ago, on July 26, 2025, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) turned 35. We Crips have much to celebrate, despite and alongside (the seemingly endless) labors with which we decidedly must continue, to affirm and demand the centrality and perpetual ethical necessity of the ADA in today’s political climes and always.

We had planned to include a map in this issue and have postponed this plan, for now, as we continue to map out the map (!). As I had noted in a prior issue introduction, “Beginning with the Summer 2025 issue, we will be sharing a map that indicates from whence our many contributors have hailed—from Wordgathering‘s inception in 2007 to the present. Thanks to amazing Rachael Zubal-Ruggieri for leading this beautiful effort to underscore Wordgathering‘s ongoing global reach and aspirations.” Please stay tuned.

We again encourage you to engage with the wide berth of visual arts and multimedia offerings shared by our generous and incredible contributors in this issue.

We hope that you will visit—and perhaps seek to contribute to—Disability in Libraries and Information Studies (DisLIS), “an open access, multimedia journal run by information professionals who work in various types of information-oriented jobs.” As described in the journal’s digital interface, “All members of the Editorial Board either have disabilities or have extensive experience with disability-centered work. Academic articles are peer reviewed using an open, collaborative review process; book reviews are editorially reviewed.” We are particularly chuffed to have learned of JJ Pionke and Jessica Schomberg’s recent DisLIS interview with wonderful Dr. Travis Chi Wing Lau, featuring Dr. Chi Wing Lau’s gorgeous new poetry collection, What’s Left is Tender (also: please stay tuned for a forthcoming review of this book in Wordgathering!).

A few other “affirmative news” items are in order, to be sure:

With joyful resistance and great care from two rapscallion cats and me in already-amazingly-autumnal upstate New York.

—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.