Issue 16
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Featured Artist
Wendy SchmidtWendy Schmidt has been writing short stories, essays, poetry and producing collage art for the last ten years. Pieces have been published in Verse Wisconsin, Chicago Literati, City Lake Poets, Literary Hatchet, Moon Magazine, Rebelle Society, and a variety of anthologies. Art has been published in several online zines.
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To You, Our Dynamite Community of Readers
Dear reader,
We love you. We see you. We wish we could hug you. The Kissing Dynamite family decided to forgo a featured writer this month and instead take a moment to connect with you, our dear friends. The COVID-19 pandemic is often called "unprecedented." We'd like to meditate on that word, for just a moment. Unprecedented means never known or done before. Certainly this situation can feel like a giant unknown. But when we think about what we're experiencing: uncertainty, anxiety, fear, loneliness, isolation—these are not unfamiliar things. Loss, the hardest part of this pandemic, and its sister, grief, are not strangers to us. So why does this feel so different? Perhaps it is the loss of autonomy, the sudden hyper-focus on our interconnected vulnerability, or maybe its scale of disruption. Your guess is as good as ours. What we do know, is that all of us are facing tough times. As members of the literary community, we have watched you step up, come together, organize, and care for each other, and we wanted to say: we see you, we honor you, we appreciate you. From sharing lesson plans, to hosting virtual poetry readings, the check-in's, the grocery store runs, the silly memes—we love it, and we are cheering you on from our individual couches. |