Introduced and Edited by Linda Michel-Cassidy
I have come to think of art-making as the result of noticing followed by description. This may sound reductive or even flip, but this idea, that we as poets, writers, visual artists, make our way by paying close attention, and then responding in an information-making mode in whatever medium suits our needs. This realization offers a vast freedom: to move between and to combine methods, modes, and materials to best communicate the artist’s response.
The writer/artists presented here make work that functions in this proposed wildness—free from the limitations of a single genre. Without hard lines between disciplines, they work in ways that suit the immediate needs of the project. Likewise, they have at their disposal the features of multiple ways of communicating. Lyricism, narrative, image, the shaping of the piece on the page—this opening up of options might feel chaotic, when in actuality, it allows for a greater precision. Hybridity allows each piece to be its own lovely and strange island, honed from a sort of electrifying boundlessness.
Linda Michel-Cassidy’s story collection, When We Were Hardcore (EastOver, 2025), was named to the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award for debut story collection longlist. Michel-Cassidy’s writing has appeared in The New Orleans Review, The Rumpus, Electric Lit, Tahoma Review, December, Catamaran, and elsewhere. She teaches experimental prose and is a freelance editor. Michel-Cassidy is senior reviews and hybrid/collaboration editor at Tupelo Quarterly.