By Mark Neely
Joe Mackall tells a story about a creative writing professor who told him that she and her students had been studying River Teeth but were having a hard time ascribing any kind of general aesthetic to the magazine. They could find “nothing consistent except a concern for quality writing” and “a strand of loss that seems to run through every issue.” Joe wrote about this meeting in his editor’s note for issue 7.2, back when River Teeth was still in its grade school days, but I’m guessing that professor’s assessment wouldn’t change much if she and her students returned to the magazine today. We have grown mightily over the years, but the vision that Joe and Dan [Lehman] began with when they founded the magazine twenty-five years ago still guides us today.
A “concern for quality writing” is still at the top of my mind when I’m reading submissions, and one of my very favorite things about this job is coming across writing so compelling that it engages me in a subject I had little interest in before I started reading. When I started working with them five years ago, Joe and Dan said they had one rule that had guided them for the life River Teeth: “If we love an essay, we publish it. If we don’t, we don’t.” Dan said he knew he loved a piece of writing if, after reading it, he wanted to call Joe up in the middle of the night and urge him to read it as well. A pretty simple editorial philosophy, but one that has produced a magazine that publishes brilliant writing by up-and-coming and unpublished writers alongside essays by some of the old warhorses of creative nonfiction.
“All the new thinking is about loss. / In this it resembles all the old thinking,” writes Robert Hass in his great poem, “Meditation at Lagunitas,” which argues that language itself is a kind of loss, an “elegy to what it signifies,” a beautiful, imperfect reflection of those tangible losses that make up our lives. Joe Mackall was thinking along similar lines in that 2006 editor’s note, saying that for him, “all great literature is about loss in one way or another.” Nearly two decades later this theme certainly runs through the current issue—loss of innocence and friendship, loss of love and life, even a lost cat named Zane, River Teeth 26.1’s unofficial mascot, who stands in for all those unexpected emotional injuries that make up an adventurous life. But in these pages you will also find humor, joy, curiosity, fierce intelligence, and, of course, some of the best nonfiction being written today.
The idea of loss may be on my mind because we are going through a period of transition here at River Teeth. Since Joe and Dan founded the magazine, they have published hundreds of writers over the course of the first fifty issues, and played no small part in establishing creative nonfiction as the vibrant and wide-ranging genre it is today. After all those years of labor they are stepping away from the daily operations of the magazine. They will continue to work on River Teeth (both, I think, are too restless and passionate for any kind of quiet retirement), reading for the book prize, and advising us on all the thorny issues that come up in these endeavors. They have been friends for many years—when we first met, I was pushing my now six-foot-two-inch son in a baby stroller—and have proven to be excellent and patient mentors. I will miss our regular conversations, perhaps most of all those times when we disagreed about a piece of writing, for it was those discussions that taught me the most about what I truly love.
Our long-time book reviews editor, Tom Larson, is also stepping away after a nine-year run where he oversaw the publication of over a hundred reviews, including a few gems of his own (you can read his latest, on Daniel Mendelsohn’s Three Rings on our website). Tom has been a tireless supporter of the small presses that keep creative nonfiction alive and flourishing, and he meticulously edited every review that came across his desk. We will miss his friendship, his dedication, and his keen editorial eye.
But it’s not all about loss here at River Teeth. Thinking back over all those issues, I can also find a parallel strand of renewal and rebirth. And so we sail onward, picking up new passengers on the way. Taking over for Tom is Brooke Champagne whose brilliant debut memoir, Nola Face: a Latina’s Life in the Big Easy, is out this year from University of Georgia Press. This year we also launched our new website, the result of hundreds of hours of work by our web designer, Rachel Hartley-Smith; our managing editor, Todd McKinney; and a host of talented interns. There, you can find an archive of River Teeth and Beautiful Things (our online journal of micro-nonfiction), along with book reviews, news, and other features. And of course, there is the new issue you hold now in your hands. As you begin each essay, I hope you will imagine one of us calling you in the middle of the night, giddy with the pleasure of discovery, saying, You have to read this.
-MN
Read Contributors’ Notes for Issue 26.1 >
