Launch: The Account!

About a year and a half ago, at a bar called The Owl in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago, a few friends and I tossed around this idea about starting a literary magazine. Being that we are PhD students studying literature and creative writing, we feel as though we have two brains: the critical brain and the creative brain. We thought it would be great if we started a magazine where others could put the work of their critical and creative brains together, side-by-side.

A lot of work went into planning this magazine, collecting work, copyediting and proofing that work, and ultimately getting it ready to “print,” but now I can announce officially: It exists!

This evening, on Mischief Night*, in anticipation of Halloween and Keats’s birthday, I am proud to say that we have released the inaugural issue of our new literary magazine, The Account: A Journal of Poetry, Prose, and Thought! Big, big thanks to our Editor-in-Chief, Tyler Mills, Fiction Editors Chris Bryson and Jessica Berger, Art Editor Annah Browning, and Nonfiction Editor Brooke Wonders.

Thanks, too, to all our contributors. I am especially proud to be Poetry Editor of a magazine that features poems by Mary Biddinger, David Kirby, Karen An-hwei Lee, Sandra Lim, Stanley Plumly, Evie Shockley, Jon Tribble, and Valerie Wetlaufer.

Check us out! There’s amazing work in store.

*Apparently “Mischief Night” is a local thing, limited to New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania. It seems like parts of Michigan call October 30th “Devil’s Night,” but most of America saves their mischief for Halloween. Today, I brought Mischief Night to Chicago (though maybe launching a literary magazine isn’t really all that mischievous).