dear reader,
This is a story about The Salal Review on its twenty-fourth birthday.
Chapter 1: We return to the workroom in the fall of 2023 with mostly new editors, but some familiar faces. One face—a student author whose work was published last year—now serves on the team who will help select literary art for this volume. Alongside the orange-kissed season, turning from warmth to wet pumpkins, we compassionately review each submission with names concealed and come to find that we have selected works composed by three of last year’s student editors. This is proof; being an editor is an immersion experience that awakens creativity. As my faculty co-advisor Abbie Leavens put it, this is a story about return and emergence.
Chapter 2: In the midst of that same fall, a personal crisis pulls me away from campus and back to my home, my family. Abbie steps in to guide our students through literary and visual selections, and I return in my mind to Spring 2020 when the two of us planned for a similar pass off; I remember sitting in the evening dark on my back deck providing a timeline update and telling Abbie, Don’t worry... It’s not like I’ll be having my baby tomorrow. Labor began the next day.
Chapter 3: It’s winter 2024 now, and I’m back in the workroom tweaking layouts with our student graphic designer, Corin Zahn. At first the page layouts were black and white; then, they turned grayscale; then, we added hues of orange, but those felt muted and stale. Once the cover turned violet, the elements started to make sense, and ripples of change began ripping through the entire manuscript. Some of the layout is nostalgic: floral patterns, leaves, and feminine figures. I marvel at the ways we unintentionally dip our needle into the past to pull a thread forward while pushing down into new fabric to stitch our way into this newest iteration of The Salal Review. Corin changed the 24 on the cover to XXIV and it settled there, like never before: a tasteful spin on the magazine’s previous motifs.
Chapter 4: Right after graduation in the spring of 2016, Allan Evald, who taught welding here at Lower Columbia College for 25 years, died quickly of cancer—he was my dad. I remember how he beamed with pride for the work he did, equipping anyone willing to learn with the skills needed to feed their families and shatter the ceilings others had erected over them. The year after he died, this magazine published digital art for the first time, and that birthed a selfish, sentimental wish within me that someday we would showcase another new medium—metal art. How can I convey, then, the significance of the piece that awaits you in this volume? Created by 17 student artists and their faculty advisor, Natasha Allen, this sculpture made of A36 carbon steel brings back my own memories of dust in the air, the smell of burnt steel, gritty orange soap on my hands, and rust red rags for drying and wiping up smudges of oil. Natasha moved the sculpture to our campus garden—because she, like my dad, beams with pride for what those students make. Louis said it could stay there as long as we’d like it to—because it belongs now. Marvin volunteered to take the new photo—because he shared my wish. I requested the photo—because Corin insisted that all who look should see the fine lines etched by a wand, the sparks erupting from the surface.
Chapter 5: On the cusp of spring break, five faculty members reclaiming our creative and writerly selves, gather as we do now—in the golden hour. This time, however, we seek a new skyline: a library with tall windows framing the river and a snow-capped mountain. While there, we read a short stack of prose crafted by budding Creative Writing students who’ve submitted their work for possible publication and a featured space in this volume; we have the difficult task of choosing only one. It’s easy to feel jealous of Abbie, who spent the entire winter quarter working closely with these talented writers, but we celebrate over Nom Nom instead and make our choice: The Red, by Tasha Kelly. It’s also a story about return and emergence. You’ll see.
With that, happy birthday Salal—look how far you’ve come. Cheers to the future, and gratitude for the past and all of its patrons.
Amber Lemiere
Faculty Advisor, Volume 24
Afterword: Next year we’ll turn 25. It’ll be our birthday again, but we are preparing a gift for you.
Chapter 1: We return to the workroom in the fall of 2023 with mostly new editors, but some familiar faces. One face—a student author whose work was published last year—now serves on the team who will help select literary art for this volume. Alongside the orange-kissed season, turning from warmth to wet pumpkins, we compassionately review each submission with names concealed and come to find that we have selected works composed by three of last year’s student editors. This is proof; being an editor is an immersion experience that awakens creativity. As my faculty co-advisor Abbie Leavens put it, this is a story about return and emergence.
Chapter 2: In the midst of that same fall, a personal crisis pulls me away from campus and back to my home, my family. Abbie steps in to guide our students through literary and visual selections, and I return in my mind to Spring 2020 when the two of us planned for a similar pass off; I remember sitting in the evening dark on my back deck providing a timeline update and telling Abbie, Don’t worry... It’s not like I’ll be having my baby tomorrow. Labor began the next day.
Chapter 3: It’s winter 2024 now, and I’m back in the workroom tweaking layouts with our student graphic designer, Corin Zahn. At first the page layouts were black and white; then, they turned grayscale; then, we added hues of orange, but those felt muted and stale. Once the cover turned violet, the elements started to make sense, and ripples of change began ripping through the entire manuscript. Some of the layout is nostalgic: floral patterns, leaves, and feminine figures. I marvel at the ways we unintentionally dip our needle into the past to pull a thread forward while pushing down into new fabric to stitch our way into this newest iteration of The Salal Review. Corin changed the 24 on the cover to XXIV and it settled there, like never before: a tasteful spin on the magazine’s previous motifs.
Chapter 4: Right after graduation in the spring of 2016, Allan Evald, who taught welding here at Lower Columbia College for 25 years, died quickly of cancer—he was my dad. I remember how he beamed with pride for the work he did, equipping anyone willing to learn with the skills needed to feed their families and shatter the ceilings others had erected over them. The year after he died, this magazine published digital art for the first time, and that birthed a selfish, sentimental wish within me that someday we would showcase another new medium—metal art. How can I convey, then, the significance of the piece that awaits you in this volume? Created by 17 student artists and their faculty advisor, Natasha Allen, this sculpture made of A36 carbon steel brings back my own memories of dust in the air, the smell of burnt steel, gritty orange soap on my hands, and rust red rags for drying and wiping up smudges of oil. Natasha moved the sculpture to our campus garden—because she, like my dad, beams with pride for what those students make. Louis said it could stay there as long as we’d like it to—because it belongs now. Marvin volunteered to take the new photo—because he shared my wish. I requested the photo—because Corin insisted that all who look should see the fine lines etched by a wand, the sparks erupting from the surface.
Chapter 5: On the cusp of spring break, five faculty members reclaiming our creative and writerly selves, gather as we do now—in the golden hour. This time, however, we seek a new skyline: a library with tall windows framing the river and a snow-capped mountain. While there, we read a short stack of prose crafted by budding Creative Writing students who’ve submitted their work for possible publication and a featured space in this volume; we have the difficult task of choosing only one. It’s easy to feel jealous of Abbie, who spent the entire winter quarter working closely with these talented writers, but we celebrate over Nom Nom instead and make our choice: The Red, by Tasha Kelly. It’s also a story about return and emergence. You’ll see.
With that, happy birthday Salal—look how far you’ve come. Cheers to the future, and gratitude for the past and all of its patrons.
Amber Lemiere
Faculty Advisor, Volume 24
Afterword: Next year we’ll turn 25. It’ll be our birthday again, but we are preparing a gift for you.