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Letter from the Editorial Director
I don’t know about you, but I’m sick to death of the artificial bullshit glutting our internet. I’m sick of scrolling past stilted videos of eerily fluid, cartoonish people in nauseating yellow lighting.
I don’t know about you, but I’m sick to death of the artificial bullshit glutting our internet. I’m sick of scrolling past stilted videos of eerily fluid, cartoonish people in nauseating yellow lighting. I’m tired of wading through generated images of Jesus made of fruit and vedge, American presidents dressed like comic book characters atop armored eagles, imposter flood refugees with pleading pigeon eyes, and bipedal hedgehogs scrambling eggs. But, above all, I’m revolted by the notion that we should get used to AI generated text because the chatbots are here to stay.
In a few short years, social media companies, AI startups, and their sycophantic boosters have transformed our most powerful communications technology into a desiccated wasteland of “content.” In this desert of abundance, as much as half of new content is generated by machines, and already automated bots make up more than half of all internet traffic. Increasingly, bots generate the content, post the content, and consume the content, completely cutting humans out of the loop.
All of this would be fine if it was confined to blogposts on Business Insider or LinkedIn profiles. But the crumbling of those “services” is only a symptom of what big tech wishes for us all: a human bot culture devoid of real feeling, of real connection, of real expression. Let, they say, the regurgitated average of all that has already been done or said be enough to say who we are, what we feel, how we love. We must reject this premise.
I’m not foolish enough to believe a new issue of The Headlight Review might herald revolutionary change. But let it be a salvo in the battle against the artificial, a barbaric yawp of human expression against the spinning fans of the datacenters that threaten to burn us up. And this howl’s a good one. We have powerful fiction edited by Mary McMyne, poetry edited by Abhijit Sarmah, and the largest collection of creative nonfiction we’ve ever published, including moving accounts of other institutions that have stifled us, love and family, and the timeless importance of literature. You’ll also find paintings, watercolors, and charcoal drawings. None of it, I’m proud to say, generated or assisted by AI.
This is our biggest issue yet, and I’m so proud of the work we’ve done to grow in these last two years. I’m also excited for the year ahead. Lately, we’ve been thinking a lot about THR’s place in our local community, and we’ve decided to use next year to consider our Southern roots. Volume 4 will be a special, double issue of the journal considering “New Southern Writing,” and I’m excited to get started on the work of connecting with nearby editors, writers, and artists to help showcase our region. We’ll have a lot of great regional content in our “High-Beams” section, too.
In the meantime, though, please enjoy this issue. We’ve worked hard to bring it together, and we hope you’ll agree it’s a testament to the supremacy of human expression at a time when that’s more threatened than it’s ever been before.
This piece was featured in Volume 3, Issue 2. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.
Letter from the Managing Editor
As I approach the culmination of my degree, I have gone through various iterations of a capstone idea. Perhaps a collection of short stories, a novel, a novel written through short stories.
As I approach the culmination of my degree, I have gone through various iterations of a capstone idea. Perhaps a collection of short stories, a novel, a novel written through short stories. How many perspectives should I include? Would one be too limiting? Would six be egregious? And, of course, at the crux of it all, the age-old question: what is the story that wants to be told?
Needless to say, it’s been an ordeal trying to figure out the answers, and it would be an understatement to say I have been nervous about all of this. I wanted to start early, get a head start on what I’m aiming for in the fall so I don’t stumble too often. This summer, however, I’ve pivoted much of my energy from capstone prep to my work at The Headlight Review. It’s had me contemplating a great deal about what the submissions we’ve accepted do to grip me, what I can learn from them as I gear up for spelunking the depths of my creativity.
My favorite part of my working on this issue has not simply been copyediting, reformatting, or proofing, but the engagement I have had with the authors, poets, and artists. Corresponding with the person behind the work is my favorite part of any role in editing. If you know the creator, you get to know the piece better, understand the nuance of what they want to say and how they want to say it.
And there I found it. The core of what I need to do to understand my capstone better. And it’s the same invitation that countless literary magazines send to potential contributors: Share a composition that is uniquely yours, that only you could ever create.
Will oil or gouache better convey the way your eyes funnel sunlight? How many characters are needed to express the complexity of your grief? Does the line need to break at a different point to give the impact you desire? The varied and unique answers to these questions are what set each of these pieces apart from the rest.
Captured within this issue of The Headlight Review are three fictional stories, five nonfiction pieces, the visual art of four artists, and the work of a whopping twenty poets, which includes our Chapbook Prize winner and finalists. Each contributor to this issue has a distinct narrative to share, one that only they could ever do justice by sharing it in their own unique voice. It is my greatest hope that you, reader, will absorb each of these pieces with compassion and care, knowing that they, in all their complexity and nuance, came from real people.
To our contributors, I’d like to extend my gratitude for making this experience so enjoyable. To Brittany Files, thank you so much for your guidance toward my start in this role. To the whole THR team, thank you for the warmth with which you’ve welcomed me onto the masthead.
And to our readers, I hope this issue inspires you to walk your stories past the page, your poems through time and space, your art over the edge of the canvas. To share your stories with the world and let them find themselves at home somewhere beyond your mind.
This piece was featured in Volume 3, Issue 2. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.
Letter from the Editor
When Andy Plattner asked me to join the editorial team of The Headlight Review in the spring of last year, I brought along my history of editing literary magazines in the Midwest. Although I was prepared to find the South different from the Rust Belt, it didn’t occur to me that even the literary magazines here might be just a little bit different.
Dear reader,
When Andy Plattner asked me to join the editorial team of The Headlight Review in the spring of last year, I brought along my history of editing literary magazines in the Midwest. Although I was prepared to find the South different from the Rust Belt, it didn’t occur to me that even the literary magazines here might be just a little bit different.
At least according to its mission statement, THR does not focus on regional literature. And, yet, by virtue of our place, our staff, and our contributors, we find hints of the New South in the pieces of this issue. Without seeking them out, we have stories of racial tension and progress here in the South, poems of southern music, food, and masculinity, and, of course, we have southern ghosts. The pieces of this issue explore our struggles to come of age, to understand ourselves, and to wrest language into authentic service.
The editorial team and I are proud to present this collection of fiction, poetry, and artwork as a testament to the brilliance of our authors and our own efforts to serve authentically in the last six months. In that time, we also awarded the 2023 Grooms Prize, judged by Anna Schachner. Begun to honor Anthony Grooms for his service here at KSU and his contributions to literature, the Grooms Prize awards $250 and a bespoke publication to a piece of quality short fiction. This year’s winner, Anita Lo’s “52 Pick-Up,” reveals a bold new voice confronting the difficulty of family and growing up. It appears in this issue alongside our two other finalists for the prize.
We have restructured the journal’s masthead for this issue, and I want to thank our guest editors, Gregory Emilio and Melanie Sumner, who edited our poetry and fiction sections respectively. Their hard work and insight have shaped those sections, and we’re immensely fortunate to have the benefit of their contributions.
Brittany Files, our Managing Editor, has been essential to sustaining THR as I came into this role. Brittany designs and publishes the website, works with our authors, and, in short, makes this publication possible, and I thank her for her service.
We also benefited this year from the hard work of Antwan Bowen, who serves as THR’s Social Media Manager, and I thank him, too, for his dedication to learning the ins and outs of publishing and for advocating on behalf of the magazine and our activities.
Finally, I want to thank Andy Plattner for offering me the opportunity to join this team. Though he will deny it, his dedication to THR has driven the journal from its inception. I’m happy to report that Andy and I have undertaken many exciting initiatives to carry his vision into the future. We’ve begun producing interviews with authors, planning a series of critical writings, undertaking some community service activities, and even designing a print edition of the magazine. About all of which, more in the next issue.
With this issue, we recommit ourselves to our mission to promote new creative writing that demonstrates the persistent value of imaginative literature. I’m especially excited to emphasize the diverse perspectives of this issue and to encourage many more new and emerging writers to join us in exploring what it means to find ourselves in a new place and a new time still haunted by the legacies of our past.
Sincerely,
Kurt Milberger, Editorial Director
Letter from the Editor
Our inaugural issue, “The Journey,” sought to illuminate our path as we embarked on a new chapter of The Headlight Review.
Dear reader,
Our inaugural issue, “The Journey,” sought to illuminate our path as we embarked on a new chapter of The Headlight Review. We started out as a class project, and after many years of groundwork and a much-needed rebranding, we published our first issue in December of 2022. Subsequently, much of our staff graduated or moved on, and The Headlight Review was left in new hands. We began the journey all over again, but this time the destination, though obscured by quite a few roadblocks, was in sight.
As I’ve wrapped up my first issue with The Headlight Review, I am feeling mostly gratitude. I would like to thank our staff for their work on this issue and our faculty advisors, Andrew Plattner and Kurt Milberger, for their guidance. But most of all I would like to thank our writers, who have stuck with us through our staff changes, publication delays, and many, many email exchanges. To our writers, I am so grateful for your trust in us to handle your stories with care and for your faith in our up-and-coming publication. I would also like to thank the writers whose pieces were not chosen for this issue. As a writer, I know all too well how difficult it is to surrender your work to the publishing industry, which can be cruel much more often than it is rewarding. Thank you for considering us to publish your work.
I am so proud to present our new issue, the culmination of six months of hard work and so many talented writers. We have some wonderful pieces in this issue, crafted by writers from all over the world. While Volume I, Issue I highlighted our journey, Volume I, Issue II celebrates the destination itself, that moment when you round that last corner and put your car in park. When you can finally let out that breath you’ve been holding for the duration of the drive because, finally, you’re here. To our readers, I hope you find something you love at this spot where we’ve completed our ride and that you’ll consider joining us on our next expedition.
Sincerely,
Brittany Files, Managing Editor
Editor’s Note
By continuing to create and share with each other, we have combined our light to forge a beacon that leads us back to one another, as well as back to the tools that we may have at one point thought we didn’t have the strength to use
This inaugural issue comes a full five years after The Headlight Review was first created in 2017 by Dr. Loverde-Dropp and her students in the Master of Arts in Professional Writing program at Kennesaw State University. The students opted for a hands-on approach to learning the ins and outs of literary publishing rather than navigating a traditional seminar-style course. Since then, the hard work that many staff members, directors, and others involved have contributed towards reaching the goals of uplifting emerging artists, establishing an internationally recognized literary journal, and pursuing knowledge outside of the constraints of a classroom setting have paid off. In those five years, THR editors, KSU community members, readers, and contributors around the world have traversed what, for many of us, felt like lightyears—through political and social turmoil in our homes and communities; through viruses that invaded our lives and took the lives of many; and through a rapidly changing publishing landscape that continues to ask us to navigate the uncertainty that comes with new technology. We as artists and consumers of art have often been left grappling with questions about the future of our industry and what we should do next.
Though the journey has often felt as if there are monsters waiting around every turn, potentially threatening our very life or livelihood, the light that illuminates the journey for manyof us—those of us for whom art is not a choice, but a reflex much like breathing—has continued to guide us on this path, becoming brighter with each turn, as it brings us closer to each other. By continuing to create and share with each other, we have combined our light to forge a beacon that leads us back to one another, as well as back to the tools that we may have at one point thought we didn’t have the strength to use.
Just as each of us has a journey we must follow, we also have a collective journey as artists, writers, and human beings that requires us to turn to each other again and again. Just as one may interpret upon viewing Issue One’s cover art, titled, “Journey,” by acrylic painter Marvin Hollman, we may find ourselves tossed about in the currents that push us, unconscious to the many obstacles and rewards that lie ahead, struggling to remember the parts of the past that can sustain us and motivate us to action, rather than tell us lies about ourselves and hold us back—much like that which these lines from “Map of Matter” by featured poet Joanna Sitt remind us of: “Those were not the days and I didn’t live / through them as much as I slewed / across the surface of their rotten skin / because the decayed hand of the past reaches / for everyone not one finger of truth.”
Luckily, we’re not riding this wave alone, and our community of artists, writers, and readers has taught us that as submissions from around the world continue to draw us into conversation, reflection, and inspiration. For this issue, we received 120 fiction stories, 273 poems, 39 creative nonfiction stories, and 23 art pieces from an amazing list of creatives and storytellers. THR would like to thank everyone who considered our journal for publication, as well as our amazing group of contributors who unveiled themselves and asked us to come along on their journey. We would also like to thank Chioma Urama (our featured interviewee) forspeaking with us about her poetry collection, A Body of Water, her process as a writer, and why we must hold tight to the ties that bond us together, throughout this great journey.
Special thanks to our amazing editorial team who worked tirelessly to finish this issue and to ensure the journal’s success in so many ways this past year. We couldn’t have done this without all of you and your contributions are what make The Headlight Review such a joy to continue creating.
We hope you all enjoy the issue as much as we enjoyed curating it. Happy reading!
Warmly,
Sam Casto and Tyra Douyon
Co-Editorial Directors