Editor's Note

Thanks for checking out the Spring 2009 issue of jmww. We've got so much to tell you. First, we're excited to feature two high fives from up-and-coming novelists Tania James and Sandra Novack. Like their styles, their columns on their favorite writers and poets are divergent and yet complimentary. Also, the third anthology of jmww is now available for seven dollars. It is so cheap you'll buy two, right? It features the best of our work from 2008, as voted by the editors, and includes Jessica Anya Blau, Jimmy Chen, Bryan S. Wang, Pete Pazmino, Paul Silverman, and more. Use the PayPal link on our homepage to order.

If our featured artist, Adam Robinson, sounds familiar to you, dear reader, it is because he has served as jmww's book review editor for the past year. Not only does Adam run the wildly popular Publishing Genius Press, which just released Shane Jones' Light Boxes (and is reviewed by Molly Gaudry in this issue, right here), but he is also an avid illustrator of telephones. Really. Check them out here.

These are exciting times in the publishing world, and we are happy to be a part of them. We strive to bring you the best book reviews, mainstream and independent, each issue, and this month we have a whooping seven, from smaller presses such as Mud Lucsious and Publishing Genius to indie upstarts McSweeneys to the old standards, Knopf and Random House. Also, in our Biography section, Gary Lehman sketches a fascinating portrait of our 16th poet laureate, Kay Ryan.

As always, if you would like to submit a book or biography review or are interested in helping out with the journal, contact me at jen.michalski@gmail.com. We always need fiction readers, but we also are interested in people with an eye for flash and, specifically, people who are interested in attracting the best innovative and tradtional poetry. Or please, just keep reading. That helps us in more ways than you can ever know.

Jen Michalski, Editor