We’re not going to lie and say we had no idea last summer when we chose our theme “Spring” how resonant it would be. We had an inkling—or, rather, a fear. But in the year of fire and ICE our hometown of Los Angeles has experienced so far, “Spring” acutely speaks to the hope we have for recovery and resistance.
Vol. X comes at a moment of community, solidarity, and celebration—and Exposition Review, as a journal and an organization, had much to celebrate this season! For one, Expo turns ten this year—a milestone we celebrated at AWP with a reading featuring contributors spanning our entire decade. Including “Spring,” we have published 303 pieces of fiction, flash fiction, nonfiction, poetry, scripts for stage and screen, experimental narratives, visual art, comics, film, and interviews. And in our Flash 405 issues, we have honored 171 more short works. We’re so gratified by the growth of the seed we planted ten years ago, cultivated in stolen time in a USC conference room and now blooming in the Los Angeles literary community and beyond.
This season we continued customs we’ve developed over the years—customs that reflect our theme’s sense of annual renewal. We welcomed several fresh, sharp voices to our editorial team, and added brand-new associate section editor roles. We held our yearly publishing workshop for emerging writers—you’ll find work by a couple of these folks in the Stage & Screen and Film sections of the journal. We fought hard for pieces that we ultimately lost—but look forward to reading them in loving homes elsewhere.
The works that we did publish embraced the breadth of “Spring” like we hoped they would, from meditations on flora to the experience of rebirth after a painful loss to the mechanical springs robots are made of.
Our original inspiration for “Spring” was one of our many in-house metaphors: a well—a life-giving source of, in our case, creativity and art. Thanks so much to our fellow editors, readers, supporters, and Expo Fam for helping us tend that well, and to our incredible contributors for feeding it.
Annlee Ellingson
Laura Rensing
Editors-in-Chief