Labor of Love

In honor of Labor Day, it feels like a good time to share news of a project I've been working on that has finally come to fruition. Today the Fall issue of Hunger Mountain, an online arts journal, goes live!

For a little over a year, I've served as Co-Editor of Young Adult and Children's Literature for Hunger Mountain. Each quarterly issue consists of about fifteen articles and fiction pieces, all of which I help solicit, edit and prep for publication. To call it a labor of love is a bit of a stretch--it's been more a labor of, well, labor. My co-editor Bethany Hegedus and I have a great time building each issue, but it's a lot of work. Seeing the magazine come together in the end always leaves me feeling a combination of relief, excitement, and pride.

Our section's theme for this issue is "Exploring Options, Stretching Boundaries...", and that link will take you to our letter/table of contents. We've gathered various authors' thoughts on how to transform personal pain into powerful prose. This topic strikes a chord because, for many of us, what we write is at least partly about processing our own experiences, and we create our best work when we try to tackle those things that are hardest to talk about--our mistakes, our fears, our unanswered questions, our wounds. For those of you who are writers, whether or not you write for kids like we do, you'll almost certainly find some articles of interest there.

The unifying message of these articles is pretty important for non-writers, too, I think. The idea that your personal experiences--the great, the awkward and the terrible--can become points of connection with others, if you can find a way to share them. It's also what we strive to achieve here at CHICKS ROCK!

Happy Labor Day! May the fruits of your labor bring you joy, fulfilment and success now and always.