The Queer Issue is Here and… Queer

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Several months ago, I forget quite when, we thought it would be a good idea to publish a guest-edited issue of queer writing and there was only one man for the job, Tim Jones-Yelvington, who has assembled a truly unique collection of words that spans the spectrum of queer in ways we could have never imagined. Both Matt and I want to thank Tim for the immense amount of time and effort he put into curating this issue. I normally hate when the term curating is used in reference to editing but here that is truly the case. The  word curate actually comes from the Latin cura, the spiritual charge of souls, and that seems fitting too.

We have, more than once, been asked, “Why a queer issue?” We don’t have a profound answer to that question. My first response has always been, “Why not?” It is not that we are trying to create a “pink ghetto” for queer writing once a year. PANK is always open to queer writing but we also thought it would be interesting to have an issue where the sole focus was on queer writing.

Oftentimes, when you sit down to read a given issue of a magazine, you know you’re going to recognize a good percentage of the writers involved. That wasn’t the case here. As we looked over the work Tim selected for us, we were particularly excited to see so many names we simply didn’t recognize, writers who are new to us.

This issue includes work from: Crystal Boson,  Mike Buffalo,  Doug Paul Case,  Elaine Castillo,  Abhishek Chaudhary,  Dennis Cooper,  Sarah Einstein,  Ben Engel,  Holly Jensen,  Adam Jest,  Tim Jones-Yelvington,  M. Kitchell,  Rickey Laurentiis,  Paul Lomax,  Dennis Mahagin,  Robert McDonald,  Christopher Phelps,  Sofia Rhei transl. by Lawrence Schimel,  Maureen Seaton,  Kevin Simmonds,  Rachel Swirsky,  Simon Sylvester,  Andrew Tibbetts,  Julie Marie Wade,  Robert Warwick,  Robert Alan Wendeborn, and  B.G. Will.

In his introduction to this issue, Tim writes, “Queer picks at “normal” like a scab, then eats it. Queer negates labels or else queer embraces many labels. Queer asks what the fuck is a label anyway.”

You’re going to read poems and stories and essays and work that defies labeling. All of it, however, tears away at scabs, eats them, savors the taste.