by Catherine Chambers
There has been a lot going on at Duende lately. I was so humbled to be a part of the first-ever WriteFest conference in Houston, Texas, along with some of our friends old and new; go check out NANOfiction, Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Art, Nat. Brut, Crab Fat Magazine, and Clarkesworld Magazine, to name a few. My fabulous senior editor Amy Sterne and I ate too many tacos. We also got to give a reading at Alabama Song alongside our faculty advisor M.A. Vizsolyi and the effervescent Houston poet Ronnie Yates. I gave a sneak peek of our upcoming Prison Writing Feature, which you can read in its entirety right here on the site April 2nd, 2016.
Miss us at WriteFest? If you will be at the AWP Conference in Los Angeles next weekend (March 30th – Aprl 2nd), you can come see managing editor Tyler Woodsmall, faculty advisor M.A. Vizsolyi, and Goddard BFA student Sergio Bettencourt-Urbina at table 818. They will have Duende swag as well as information on Goddard College’s low-residency model, and the postcards officially announcing our next feature, EXODUS:
Duende seeks poetry, prose, hybrid work, and visual art from the hearts and minds of those who are displaced; those without a home or those who have lost one; those who are crossing borders both tangible and not; those who are immigrant, refugee, first generation, or emigrant; those who are homesick; those who haven’t looked back. Submit work starting May 2016.
As the spring BFA residency approaches, I find myself already homesick for this little journal that could. I am on the brink of my final semester at Goddard, when it seems like just yesterday we were reading for issue two and I became poetry editor because I said, “Give me the job no one else wants to do.” By the time I graduate, I will have seen Duende through three issues and most of two features. I have pulled all-nighters and shed tears and put mimosas into coffee cups on conference calls so that no one would be able to tell. I am so proud of all the work this publication has done and will do, and thank you to every person who has submitted work, to our contributors, to all the current and former staff, to our support system among the Goddard faculty and administrators, to the Gunst foundation. We couldn't do it without you.