Description
The New Territory’s Issue 07, titled “Sanctuaries,” is one of the most ambitious issues the magazine has published. In her letter to readers, executive editor Sara Maillacheruvu suggests the value of looking for unexpected places of safety and renewal: “Can’t a sanctuary also be stark, un-beautiful, ragged? Aren’t the most sacred things to us often flawed and imperfect?”
Contributing writers and artists follow this call in their work, seeking unconventional perspectives on the places and communities they know best. Through detailing what her Primitive Baptist Church in Arkansas has lost over years of declining membership, Natalie O’Neal finds language to describe what its community and spirituality means to her. “This religion works in the rural spaces where God appears in creeks and fields and well-worked land,” she writes.
A photo essay by Kelsey Putman Hughes explores how Oklahomans are finding new ways to protect public lands as state park budgets erode. The state pruned Wah-Sha-She State Park from the budget, but the Osage Nation stepped up to protect the land. “When it comes down to it, the people will find a way to preserve what is important to them,” writes Hughes.
Chase Castor documents the rhythms of work, adventure, and family traditions on his family’s farm in the Missouri Ozarks, Four Bar C. While his father’s passion for rodeo has waxed and waned, and he now also sells auto parts to make ends meet, the farm continues to be a place of regenerative peace and possibility for both father and son.
Allysa Cervantes Hallett’s watercolors of plant and animal life, both scientifically precise and artistically whimsical, illuminate the pages of Issue 07’s literature section. Also featured: nonfiction by Kathryn Nuernberger, poems by Margaux Griffith and Jeanetta Calhoun Mish, and fiction by Christopher Linforth.
In recounting the story of protests to save the Wakarusa Wetlands in Kansas from highway construction, Soren Larsen and Jay T. Johnson document an alliance between Native and non-Native activists that reveals how transformative protest “emerges in the million tiny moments of dialogue and encounter that come from simply by being together in place.”
“The New Territory puts The Lower Midwest in the center of the universe,” says founder and publisher Tina Casagrand. Among the magazine’s founding principles is the belief that local contributors are the publication’s strongest asset, as local writers have implicit understanding of the region and access to colorful characters.
Connect the dots! When you buy a copy of The New Territory, you get more intimate with the Lower Midwest AND you support writers and artists who ensure our cultures endure.
Details
- 128 pages
- Perfect bound
- Full color
- Printed in Missouri in January 2019
- Free shipping for subscriptions
