Alice Driver is a journalist from Arkansas whose book Life and Death of the American Worker: The Immigrants Taking on America’s Largest Meatpacking Company was published in 2025. She published her first article about the story in The New Territory Issue 06 in 2018.

She found support for her creative work as well as collaboration with editor and journalist Ann Friedman, leading to an interview in Friedman’s newsletter, The Ann Friedman Weekly.

“I love reading and supporting local publications. Growing up in rural Arkansas, I feel deeply connected to the land, and I want to find other writers rooted in that sense of place,” Driver said.

Callie Arnold started working with The New Territory as an editorial fellow in September 2025. She was introduced to The NT by one of her former English professors, Dr. Kristin Van Tassel, who had a poem in Issue 18. Through her work with the magazine, she found an opportunity to enter the competitive field of the literary industry from the comfort of her own home in Hillsboro, Kansas, allowing her to develop her literary skills in a low-pressure environment. She finds her time with the magazine has also been made rewarding by the chances it has provided her to network with individuals outside of her circle and the community that it brought. The NT has inspired her to generate original works again, and with her new experience in the submissions process, has brought her a better understanding of the lengths literary works must endure to be accepted for publication.

“Regional writing matters not only because it’s underrepresented and reveals a beauty otherwise unknown to the rest of the world, but regional writing sheds ugly monikers and allows us to return to each other without shame or restlessness. What makes a Midwesterner has nothing to do with an accent, a common vocabulary, or a birth certificate. To be Midwestern is to appreciate the charm of what’s here and I intend to always support those who are inspired by that,” said Callie Arnold on the importance of regional writing.

In 2018, my first year as Director of The Story Center at Mid-Continent Public Library, I tried to visit all 34 branches of the Library.  One morning I came across a copy of The New Territory in the periodicals collection at the Parkville branch. 

Recognizing the value of such a quality, regional publication to our customers, I arranged a subscription for the Story Center’s collection.  I also reached out to Tina Casagrand to explore how the Story Center and The New Territory Magazine might collaborate in some programmatic way. 

It took us a few years to figure this out, but, when we did, the Plein Air Micro Essay Writing workshop was the result.  The 33 acres of the Woodneath Library Center, where the Story Center is located in Kansas City, Missouri, are layered with many stories, both natural and cultural.  Our plan was to develop a free, public program that would empower participants to learn about those stories and use them as catalysts to create something original while honing writing skills. 

On a sunny Saturday in late May, led by a facilitator, Michaella Thornton, endorsed by The New Territory, participants painted with words instead of oils.  After minor revisions, those words came together as the ten micro essays in En Plein Air: Micro Essays from Woodneath, a publication designed by the New Territory and printed by the Library.  Distributed freely, the publication results from and reconfirms the Story Center’s mission to empower people to create stories, share those stories, and connect with the stories of others.  The essays and accompanying photographs are grounded in the specifics of our place, and collectively they add another layer to the complex, ongoing story of Woodneath, a story that The New Territory Magazine, as a natural, and instrumental, partner for this project, helped to create.