personal stories about the places of Midwestern literature

Looking over the five essays that make up the sixteenth volume of Literary Landscapes, I am struck by the way these contributors seek, establish, and develop their perspectives on the places and writers and experiences they lead us through.

It’s visible in the images at the top of this page. Working from the outside in: looking from a bucolic riverside park toward a more industrial and less inviting landscape; backing out to a more abstract view of a familiar city, losing the specifics and highlighting a broader kind of connectivity; peering over a somber marker at cheerful, tacky sloganeering; a joyful moment in public, a private moment stolen because of circumstance and mediated by both time and the camera; and a view into a public place, or its fragmented simulacrum, from a much more private one.

The strain is palpable. Not in the writing, and I think not in the experience of reading these essays. But in the work they do, in their efforts to make sense of their subjects and their spaces, in their connections to elsewhere, and to futures and pasts.

I am glad to share these essays with you, and I hope you’ll both enjoy and then share them with others. And if you have an idea for a Literary Landscapes essay of your own, I would love to receive your pitch! See here for a list of potential sites and a bit of description about the goals of the series.

Andy Oler, Departments Editor
The New Territory