Photo by Maeve Holler
Dear Reader,
Today, we release the sixth issue of Sinking City. It is the
first day of the Fall 2019 semester at the University of Miami and the sky is teeming
with a thick humidity only known as August to South Floridians. The air is wet
& dense & impenetrable.
For us in Miami, today marks the end of the eternal summer. Perhaps for The Girl Caught in a Landslide, today is merely a Monday where she is remembered again as out-of-place and subterranean. Or perhaps she, like many of us, is being Rapunzeled, over & over again.
Today, the Queen of the Sunken City is resurrected in flashes of yellow. For her, today may be a tool of re-imagination. A way of knowing The Broken Parts are only a blurry recollection of yesterday. And perhaps, while she flares in between space & time, the Queen rides slow on a ’77 Alva, Megamillions ticket in hand.
In Sinking City’s sixth issue, 11 writers, poets, and artists explore the mechanisms of today, tomorrow, and yesterday. They question the validity of reality and expand with futurism into possibility. Like our previous Managing Editor Stephanie Lane Sutton wrote about issue five, while Sinking City is directly dedicated to bringing attention to climate change and environmental issues, “these pieces are less about the environment itself & more about the challenges of intersecting identities during our historical moment.”
I am encouraged by these pieces to consider a universe beyond the challenges at hand. These writers and artists expand the concept of probability tenfold. And, sitting in the high morning sun of Miami, watching the pregnant rain clouds flit by, I know that the work in this issue is much needed, and will continue to generate new meaning over time, sight unseen. As Alina Stefanescu writes, “If you watch a plant, it won’t grow.”
On behalf of the MFA program at the University of Miami, I
am honored to welcome you to this realm. And whatever today means for you,
wherever you are, I hope these pieces grow alongside you—no matter what storm,
or lack thereof, you are facing.
Sincerely,
Maeve Holler
Managing Editor, Sinking City