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’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. 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.