Foreword from the Editors (Spring 2019)

April 29, 2019

Dear Friends of MORIA,

Alyssa Pieprzyca here, the current Editor-in-Chief of MORIA, Woodbury University’s student-run, national online literary magazine. Today marks the release of Issue Three, and we would like to thank all the poets and authors who submitted and contributed to us. This is my third, and final, time being on the staff, and, I can truly say, it has been a life-changing experience. It’s an honor to work with professional poets and authors, and I have learned first-hand how much words can change the way we look at and experience the world around us.

To start, I would like to highlight the privilege it was for MORIA to feature six poems by Heidi Seaborn from her recently-published book, Give a Girl Chaos (see what she can do). Seaborn’s poems appear as six distinct markers throughout the issue, like suns that scatter light outward onto the surrounding ground. Placing her poems this way throughout our issue — as sites of influence — helped us, in the editorial room, organize the issue thematically. We begin by introducing the themes of death, loss, and failure; then move into work that highlights the universe and cosmos; from there, we telescope down into parents and children; then disasters of both the human-made and natural variety; and, lastly, end with what I like to call the “in-between” — that period of merely waiting that is so common in life. Whether you choose to read the issue from front-to-back to get a sense of the narrative arc, or at random, we hope you pick up on some of the connected motifs we have pieced together.

A word about reading us on various screen widths: MORIA is formatted for a typical laptop or desktop computer monitor and is best read — meaning, we are always accurate to the authors’ intended formatting — on that standard screen size. We strive for perfect copyediting. When reading on smaller screen sizes, including tablets and especially mobile phones, the formatting may or may not appear accurately. We would suggest reading in landscape orientation (turning your phone to the horizontal), which will help in most cases. In order to accommodate some of the more irregular poems’ forms, we will sometimes upload it as an image instead of typesetting directly onto the blog page, in an attempt to preserve the work’s intended appearance. However, due to the technological limitations of reading literature with hard line breaks and irregular formatting on small screens, we can not guarantee a perfect reading experience in every case. In some cases, a reader’s computer may not have our font available, and the minute a device converts our website into a different font, the formatting suffers. We remain sensitive to the expectations of both authors and their readers for accuracy and would encourage those with concerns to read us via larger screens until such time as the technology catches up to the artistic vision.

Our overall acceptance rate for this third issue was 18% and, as always, MORIA is keenly aware of how important diverse voices are to the publishing world. Out of the 48 total pieces we’ve published in this issue, 79% were by women and 13% were by writers of color, both of whom are typically underrepresented groups. We would also like to mention the wide range of ages included in this issue, representing authors from 15 to 65. We are committed to expanding our rates of inclusion. The editors and I would like to thank these poets and writers for telling their stories and choosing MORIA as their home.

Lastly, we would like to express our deep gratitude to Dr. Matthew Bridgewater, Chair of the Writing Department, as well as to the other Writing Department faculty; to Ofelia Huidor, our administrative assistant, for her professionalism and continuous help; to Dr. Reuben Ellis, Interim Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, for his positivity and unflagging support; to Greg Houle, the Director of Marketing, for his financial assistance; and, lastly, to our faculty editor, Dr. Linda Dove, for her tremendous patience, mentorship, and wisdom. MORIA could not have happened without the support and guidance of these people, and the staff and I would like to acknowledge how appreciative we are to have worked with them, and with these poets and writers, and to have played a role in bringing Issue Three into the world.

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed making it.

Respectfully yours,

Alyssa Pieprzyca, Editor-in-Chief
for the Editors of MORIA Literary Magazine

MASTHEAD (MORIA, ISSUE THREE, Spring 2019)

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF                              Alyssa Pieprzyca
MANAGING EDITOR                            nicholas Haddad
PRODUCTION EDITOR             Tania Sislian
PROGRAM MANAGER                          AHDENAE KHODAVERDIAN
EVENTS COORDINATOR                        Tricia lopez
SOCIAL MEDIA CURATOR                      maddison taylor

SUBMISSIONS REVIEW STAFF          JASON LEE
KHAN MUHAMMAD
ERIk Alfaro

FACULTY EDITOR                              LINDA DOVE, PH.D

Photo Credit: Mathew Haddad