January 2014
Editor's Note
A Letter from Tishon Woolcock, Publisher
The internet: the great democratizer, the mad equalizer of opinions, scourge of the publishing Industry, the actual honest-to-god sound of flood gates crashing open. It serves us well. The many of us, little guys with ideas larger than ourselves who tap away at all hours in hopes of capturing, crafting, or simply elucidating something essential.
The Well&Often Reader was born out of a desire to add more than just additional noise to the world of online mags. We imagined a magazine of work by yet-to-be discovered writers, a magazine that readers could read “cover-to-cover” in under an hour but still feel completely filled. This was not revolutionary stuff. The internet is a petri dish of lit mags, many of which are quite good. But we wanted The Reader to be a bit different. We wanted it to be a place where the work moved beyond the publication. We wanted the poems and stories to make their way into classrooms, because it is our belief that classrooms are where literature matters most. We also wanted a place to champion the leaders of our classrooms, the teachers and educators who are making new writers every day.
It is with genuine sadness that I say this will be our final issue. We’d like to believe that in our brief existence we have achieved what we set out to do. All four issues and all our lesson plans will remain online for posterity and also because Google Analytics says you dig them.
Thank you to my partners and co-editors Nora Salem, Anna Meister, and Caits Meissner. You set the tone of The Reader. Thank you Kameelah Janan Rasheed for your excellent work on The Well&Often Reader interviews; they continue to be our most popular pieces. Thank you to all our contributors for allowing us the honor of publishing your work. And most of all, thank you, reader, for lending us one of your most sought-after assets, your attention.
– Tishon Woolcock
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