As I finish my tenure as editor of Quarterly West, it seems fitting that I write my first ‘Editor’s Notes,’ a newer feature for us. Over the past few years, I’ve tried to articulate many times what our aesthetic is as a journal. On our submissions page it says we like work that is “different,” and “slightly to the left,” and though we try to specifically describe this for our readers, we can’t, because different has to look, well, different every time.

Different in this issue, for example, looks like a story that considers the women who survive in horror films (“The Thing”). What their lives are like, their sexuality, do they tell their children what happened? They, as it turns out, drink on porches, just like we all do. Different is a new vision of apocalyptic in “Stolen/Woven,” one that is aware of the zombie cliché but imagines the richer and more real horror of rising oceans, extinctions, a metaphorical and literal “poison sun.”

Different is blatent and loud in Katrina Greco’s poem, where lines drawn through words tell us what is meant to have meant to have been what, revised? Erased? Yet persists, perseveres. Different is quieter in the way magic and mundacity interweave in Rotterman’s “Murrain” (Found a recipe for caramel-nut brownies/ In the cupboards, mountains of quartz).

Our new media is different by nature, asking us to think about language integrated with image and sound, whether the theme is Chicago, or Werner Herzog. Our reviewers look at books doing new and different things, and our nonfiction editors always find something that shows us a refreshing look at the “truth,” as in this issue’s “On the Lifeboat,” where contributor J.D. Smith considers the self on a lifeboat with various companions when the inevitable is that someone must go.

So, different, then, and for the past three years it’s been a joy to work with the variety of meanings of that word. I have favorites that over the past years I’ve held close to my heart, Diane Joseph’s nonfiction piece The Baby (Issue 75), is among them, as is Sean Bernard’s The Stolen Bike and Other Fables (Issue 77). But I must also say that, amidst all this difference, lots at Quarterly West has remained the same: like how incredibly lucky I feel to have worked with the dedicated and brillant, past and present, staff of Quarterly West. The continued commitment of the genre editors to find work that pushes the boundaries while keeping one foot on the ground has made this job easy. The rigor of my fellow editors and their dedication to improving Quarterly West, from a novella contest to new website platforms, has made this job rewarding. The supporters of our journal, both within and without the University of Utah, have made this job possible. Last but most definitely not least, our contributors and our readers have made this job nothing short of do-a-little-dance inspiring.

Dan Graham once wrote that “All artists are alike, they dream of doing something that’s more social, more colloborative, and more real art.” As editor of this journal, I feel I have been able to do that something, and for that I am indebted.

Thank you.

Sadie Hoagland