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EDITOR'S MESSAGE
In this issue we celebrate the vibrancy of the online literary community by going to the Able Muse's backyard into the Eratosphere Forums and harvesting for you the best from our e-workshops. We have somewhat done this in previous issues, however, we are doing it officially this time.
This Community Issue showcases the serious and light verse from the winners of two major Eratosphere-based poetry contests — The Eratosphere Poet Contest, and The Tipsy Muse Poetry Contest. Furthermore, our featured poet, Len Krisak, is no stranger to contests, with several literary contests to his credit, including The Richard Wilbur Award from the University of Evansville, and is, incidentally, an active member of the Eratosphere community. Don't miss Len's interview by his good friend whom you already know as a wonderful poet, but surprise! is also quite an accomplished interviewer, Rhina P. Espaillat.
You will find that this latest, yet-again-redesigned Eratosphere is not only aesthetically pleasing, but features daily posts of high calibre work, and enlightened responses from the registered members, and further still, boasts a long list of acclaimed writers and poets as moderators. See our masthead for a complete list of our current moderators, or better yet, stop at Eratosphere to interface with the moderators and the other e-workshop members.
Unfortunately, Karen Bjorneby was unable to continue with us as fiction editor due to other pressing commitments. However, we are most delighted to welcome the talented Nan Leslie as the new fiction editor for the Able Muse. Nan is no stranger to Able Muse and Eratosphere visitors. Her fiction has been published in over twenty literary magazines. She is nominated for The Pushcart Prize and won the fiction award from the University of Washington's Fiction Writer's Association. She is the assistant fiction editor of Web Del Sol's In Posse Review and writes feature articles for the The Writer magazine. You can experience her fine editorship for yourself from the fiction she accepted and edited for this issue. Please join me in giving an enthusiastic welcome to Nan!
We are also very pleased to bring you the delightful artwork from our featured artist, Diane Fenster. She holds the record of being our first featured artists to span not one, not two, but three slide shows. We hope you'll especially enjoy our innovative dynamic presentation of her insightful illustration of T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," and her "Magdalen Laundries Series." We also feature in this issue, the vibrant HyperPhotos of Jochen Brennecke.
Additionally, we bring you, as is our custom, the very best poetry and fiction from this issue's cast of talented contributors, such as Kim Bridgford's who contributed a wonderful story, the longest we've published so far — longer than our published guidelines, but accepted for its exceptional merit. And, Kim also has poetry in this issue.
As usual, we have all the automated ease of use features you’ve come to expect of Able Muse — such as automatically recommending the poetry, prose and art pages of your choice to your friends, or posting a comment or response to articles in our forums.
I would like to conclude with special thanks to Nan Leslie our new fiction editor, and to Julie Carter and Carol Taylor, two of our Eratosphere moderators, for their help with proofreading this issue.
Welcome to the Community Issue of the Able Muse!
As a final note, our sponsor pages are now still automated for instant acceptance and processing of your kind contributions. Although Able Muse and Eratosphere have been enjoying an explosion in hit count and visitors — 200% worth since the last issue, proudly clogging gigabytes of leased server bit buckets — our sponsor page is probably the least visited webpage in all of Cyberspace! We urge you to visit that page with evangelical zeal, and thus help us achieve our goals and growth plans for Able Muse and all its authors.
Thank you for your visits and support of Able Muse and our authors.
Sincerely,
Alex Pepple
—Editor.
