Dear friends of Epiphany,
It’s with a degree of melancholy that I take my leave this month as Epiphany’s editor-in-chief. I’m on to other things — things that I’m looking forward to — but I’ll miss the Epiphany community. So I thought I’d take this occasion to take stock, give thanks, and look back on how the organization has grown, these past three years.
When I came aboard, Epiphany’s staff was comprised of just two employees, and we were just beginning, then, to publish regularly online. I’ve learned a great deal since then, as an editor, an employee, and a colleague. It has not always been easy. But overall I have been immensely fortunate to get to work closely with so many brilliant, inventive writers; with our gracious, generous board; with our more than thirty sharp and tireless readers; and, most of all, with our kind and talented staff.
Today the tiny operation I was hired to help oversee has become a busy, collaborative little hive of ideas. We are a year-round online publication. We are a multiple prize-awarding literary nonprofit! (An essay by our inaugural Fresh Voices fellow, Brittany Allen, will soon be available to read online; work by the four winners of the student writers’ Breakout! Prize will appear in the forthcoming print issue.)
Lastly, and perhaps most excitingly, our staff has expanded significantly since those early days. Epiphany’s day-to-day operations remain in the hands of our kick-ass managing editor, the inimitable Miracle Jones. Grants applications and fundraising are the responsibility of our skilled development director Jessica Brown. And, after my departure, editorial responsibilities will be divided among our brilliant staff editors: Simona Blat, Diego Medina, and Chris Leslie-Hynan. A bit about them, now, for the writers among you:
Jose Diego Medina is the web editor at Epiphany magazine; he will also work on the forthcoming Spring/Summer ’22 print issue. In addition to selecting and editing prose for publication, Diego is the aesthetic genius behind all the great illustrations you see on our Instagram account and website. He says, “The stories that stand out to me are the ones that hold an inexplicable weight, that have some sort of gravity on the page. They usually appear as a surprise, pulling me in with all of what they are.” He lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Chris Leslie-Hynan is the newest addition to our editorial team. His debut novel Ride Around Shining was published by Harper and nominated for the 2015 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. His short fiction has appeared in American Short Fiction, ZYZZYVA, Harvard Review and Epiphany. He grew up in Wisconsin, and attended Carleton College and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He is looking for prose that combines the harsh with the lyrical, and loves finding new talent in the slush.
Simona Blat has been at Epiphany since 2020, when she came aboard to edit the online series of new criticism The Epiphanic; she quickly became our poetry editor. A Russian-American poet, writer, and bookseller, Simona received her MFA in poetry from Columbia University. She views nonfiction as a lifeline, connecting her to other writers who think and write passionately about what obsesses them; in poetry, she looks for work by diverse writers, especially international and marginalized poets — poems that, once read, stick in the mind and beg to be reread. “The poem has to affect me on a gut level,” Simona says. “How or why that happens, I don’t always know. Which makes poetry a constant mystery and its very appeal. I’m very grateful I get to do this work for Epiphany.”
So, you see, I am leaving optimistically, secure in my faith that Epiphany the publication — and, likewise, Epiphany the literary nonprofit — is (are!) in very good hands. My work here is done. If you need me I’ll be up here in snowy Western Massachusetts, checking my mailbox daily for Epiphany’s forthcoming Winter Issue, guest-edited by the dazzling Raad Rahman. From what I’ve seen, this issue is going to be a good one.
Yours,
.
Rachel
