Letter From the Editor:

The first story in this collection is Michael Poore's The Whale in the Moon not because it's better than the other stories, or because fiction is better than other genres, but because it was the story that sparked the idea for the magazine.

From the first sentence, Poore's writing had me captivated. I wanted to share it with everyone who ever asked me, "Is there anything good to read?" Oh, but yes, yes there is!

There's a rhythm to making a magazine, and the stories in Second Writes are arranged much like one would compose a symphonic work. You can't group things together, all the long movements here, or the light moods here, you need to create rests and contrasts.

It would have been easier to pepper the entire magazine with poems between every story, or start all the stories on the right hand side, using the poems as padding to make sure the spacing was just right. But I didn't do this because I wanted to showcase the authors, so that you could get a sense of who these poets are.

I could have gathered these stories by genre, but I didn't want to create a sense of dissimilarity. No; a good story, whether it is a poem or a play, an essay or pure fiction, is a good story. The earliest stories we have are in the poetic form: legends and epic tales from over 4000 years ago and today the world loves a good play in the form of a movie.

The only other story in this collection whose place was predetermined was Gillian Grattan's Lost Weekend because this play is the coda to the magazine. It sums up all the movements: the long, the short, the light and dark. The rhythm of the Irish speech creates its own poetry. There is the veracity of place and language and the folly of a plan gone wrong.

It's all here, in no order of preference, for you to enjoy.

Marcelle Kube
Founding Editor