Why We're Here, Doing This

​Hey y'all. I'm the editor, if you can call it that, of L=Y=R=A. These editorial shenanigans are one of the subsets of the passion-project that is L=Y=R=A, and it's likely to be the home of our snippses - brief thoughts, ruminations, recommendations, 18th century naming conventions, little tidbits - whatever. 

It's common that the editorial staff of literary magazines and projects and whatnot flex their heel-turns and step from the pep of the lit-mag heart and become more like the lit-mag skin - holding everything and everyone together, but distancing themselves from the pith. Guys, I've worked with quite a few lit-mags, and I can tell you - editorial preference is huge. Yeah, lit theory and whatnot is the backbone of it all, sure, but the editorial authority is always there and it influences shit. It's sometimes quiet, seldom owning the concessions it owes to the art of the editor. It's a thing, we're a thing, and our discourse is inevitable. Here, we want to share it with you. We staff here at L=Y=R=A love art, we love your art, and we don't want to pretend as if we're not all simultaneously in motion, eating the flesh of each other's passing breath. That's why we're here, and that's why we do this. L=Y=R=A's editors cannot exist in a vacuum, nor can the readers. The only reason we're here - as editors - is because we bothered to piss $80 or whatever a month into language and we happen to care about its presence. So we decidedly mired it with our own. We exist, whether fortunately or not, and we have intents.

​I'm not suggesting micro-management, nor am I suggesting that we editors will stuff our grimy little noses in everything - we hate micromanagement and place artistic freedom on the loftiest of pedestals. However, we do wish to be transparent here. And that's why this "editorium" exists and that's why it's as bizarrely-named as everything else. That's also why I am writing this piece, which I may very well recall tomorrow morning with a grimace. Our poor and sometimes-strong and sometimes strong-but-only-in-concept pieces will be out in the open for you. You can read them and think, "How could they have rejected me when they wrote this horseshit?" Well, that's a good question.

And the answer is because we're human, as are all editors. You can feel free to reject us, too.