It’s been a joy to edit this interview issue (Volume II) of new (in 2024) books by writers with Mennonite heritage and connections. Our previous interview (Volume I) issue of books published since the 2022 Mennonite/s Writing conference (2022-2023) can be found in our archive here: https://mennonitewriting.org/journal/issues/
Together, these two issues offer a lively snapshot of the variety, talent, and innovation of the current state of Mennonite/s Writing. We hope they will pique interest in the upcoming Mennonite/s Writing Conference to be held in June 2025 at Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg.
Jeff Gundy and I spent time brainstorming last summer for new journal issues and decided that what we’d most like to read in The Journal of Mennonite Writing are current writers on their newest works, those published since the 2022 Mennonite/s Writing Conference. You can hear these voices in our current issue (Interviews: Vol. II) and in the November 2024 issue. Rarely does one have the opportunity to ask a writer about their own work. And whether or not writers are reliable informants on the true meaning of their work—(that resides in each reader, some of us believe)—it is revealing and engaging to hear them speak about it.
In addition to the current interviews, this issue features an original poem by Julia Spicher Kasdorf which offers an metaphor for the ways in which literary works can extend the boundaries of community.
We hope that these books could inform your holiday shopping list, as well as your New Years’, Birthday, Library, Classroom and Self-love lists for the coming year. Each one provides a unique voice that will engage you in lively, reflective, and beautiful discourse and offers an invitation to be part of the every-growing community of what constitutes Mennonite/s Writing. Enjoy!
Ann Hostetler, 23 December 2024
About the Author
Ann Hostetler is the editor of A Cappella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry (Univ. of Iowa Press 2003) and author of two collections of poems, Empty Room with Light (Dreamseeker 2002) and Safehold (Dreamseeker 2017). Her poems and essays have appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies including The American Scholar, Poet Lore, The Valparaiso Poetry Review,Rhubarb Magazine, Testimonies and Tongue Screws: Poems, Stories, and Essays Inspired by the Martyr's Mirror, Making Poems: Forty Poems with Commentary by the Poets (2010), The Mennonite Quarterly Review and PMLA . Professor Emerita of English at Goshen College in Goshen, Indiana, Hostetler is the web site editor of the Center for Mennonite Writing and co-editor of its Journal. She directed the 2022 Mennonite/s Writing conference at Goshen College.