Psychopomp Magazine Winter 2014 | Page 5

WORDS FROM THE EDITORS

Dear Readers,

Welcome to Issue 2 of Psychopomp Magazine. In the small press world, the aesthetic of a journal is still very much a question mark in its early issues. While, from the outset, we branded ourselves as a journal that works between the intersections of form and genre, it is our hope that these stories and pieces of art will add to our foundation of ferrying you away from the familiar. This year will bring new issues, the announcement of our contest winner by our judge, Timothy Schaffert, and our inaugural annual.

In this issue, nuns, a golden thread, an alchemical word, afternoon tea, recovery from an illness, the veil separating the living from the dead, and the literal end of the world will transport you to the magical, the otherworldly, and the starkly human. While wildly different from each other in many ways, all of these stories juxtapose realms (or work between them) and do so with an attention to language that escapes the purely conventional and everyday.

In addition to this issue’s stories, we offer you a selection of art that parallels the strange and surreal just as much as the words on the pages neighboring them. We’re particularly excited about our cover art from Eric Fan, an artist whose work has graced many Threadless t-shirts. We hope to feature more art (including hybrid work) in the future, as we would like to support artists of all stripes working tirelessly to unnerve and amaze us.

Thank you to all who made this issue possible. And thanks most of all to you, our readers.

Sequoia Nagamatsu

Managing Editor