Season's Greetings!

Photo courtesy of contributor Justin Hamm

Hi, all,

Signe here on behalf of Stoneboat.  Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, Feliz Navidad, Mery Festivus, et cetera and so on.  Please insert your preferred holiday greeting here.

Whatever your belief system might be, there are probably a few underlying themes that you notice during the holiday season once you look past the flashing twinkle lights and the mall Santas.  The holiday season is all about humility and forgiveness -- and love.  Let's not forget about love.

Sharing with the Ghosts

It is a nice feeling when the hard work of putting together an issue of Stoneboat results in not only a beautiful object that can be held in the hands and savored, (thank you Jim Giese, still our designer even though he is pursuing an MFA in environmental writing in Montana), but also a successful reading. We had great fun yesterday at Paradigm Coffee and Music in Sheboygan and had a nice turn out of "ghost readers." What is a ghost reader you may ask? This is a person, not the author of a particular work, who reads in the author's stead. Thank you ghost readers! This group included Nate Baake, Jake Belknap, the entire Byrand family, Karl Elder, Sean Gilligan, Amy Kudrow, and the editorial staff of Stoneboat (aka, me, Rob, and Signe.)

Changes in Stoneboat Land

If you follow this blog, or our Twitter or Facebook accounts, you may have noticed that lately there's been some radio silence on the Stoneboat front. We're going through some big changes, both personally and journal-wise, and those changes have slowed us down a bit. For the first time in Stoneboat history, we are going to have to push back an issue release date.  Ordinarily, our fall issues come out October 15th.  This time, though, we're shooting for November 1st.

Let me explain...

Community Poetry Reading

Lisa Vihos reads from her new chapbook.

We've all been to poetry readings before. You know...the poet has a new book out, so she reserves the stage at a local coffee house and proceeds to read her favorites from the new collection.  It's forty-five minutes of one continuous voice droning on, poem after poem, occasionally interrupted up by a story about the inspiration for a particular piece or the process of writing a specific poem. It always makes me sleepy, despite consuming the coffee house fare.  I just can't pay attention, even when the poems are good.  It's too monotonous.

Going to Montana Soon...

So, we had a great editorial meeting on Tuesday night, working on the fall issue. We had so many submissions to go through, it was physically and spiritually daunting. I sometimes wish we had as many subscriptions as we had submissions. At one point, we were going to call it a night, and I remember Jim saying, "let's soldier on." It was almost grueling, but in a good way, and we did it. We are looking forward to another great issue, and we will be trying a new method of creating the journal, using CreateSpace.

Stoneboat Special Issue

Special edition of Stoneboat for the Lakeland College Sesquicentennial
-get yours at www.stoneboatwi.com-

Stoneboat, being affiliated with and owing its birth to Lakeland College, recently published a special edition for the college's sesquicentennial celebration held June 21-25.  Through a generous grant from the school, the editorial staff was able to produce the publication which included prose, poetry, and artwork from current and past Lakeland faculty, alumni, and friends.

In It for the Brownies

I have been remiss. I have the problem of being a poet and small press associate editor who also has to work at a regular day job for a living as well as be a parent, friend, daughter, and someone who occasionally washes a dish or throws a load of laundry into the washing machine.

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Assisting the EIC

Our divine Editor-in-Chief, Rob Pockat, offered to write a little something about our recent release reading. He is also doing a substitute teaching gig right now and is staying just one step ahead of his high schoolers on the topic of mythology. So, writing a blog post is probably the furthest thing from his mind. In fact, he may have even forgotten he said he would do this.

Parakeets, Poetry, and Prose

We, the editors at Stoneboat, are happy to report that any second now, issue 2.2 will be in our hands, and the several additional online exclusive pieces are already available for you to view on our website. We are very excited that the cover image is a work of art by visual poet, Matthew Stolte.

National Poetry Month Off and Running

April is National Poetry Month, so it is very fitting that we are preparing Stoneboat 2.2 for your reading pleasure. We expect to have the new issue in hand on April 16 or thereabouts, just in time for the April 21 release reading at Paradigm Coffee and Music. We trust that if you are within a 60-mile radius of Sheboygan, you will do your best to come and join us. We will have folks coming from Milwaukee, Elkhart Lake, and Manitowoc as well as two readers participating via Skype from Alaska and San Francisco. The reading is from 2-4 p.m. and will conclude with an open mic, so bring an original poem or prose excerpt, or a favorite piece by another author.