Clockhouse‘s sixth volume is still in its final production stages, but we’re able to give you an idea of what to expect with Sarah Cedeño’s “Note from the Editorial Director.”  As always, there will be a special Preview Reading of the new Clockhouse volume during the Clockhouse Writers’ Conference & Retreat, and every CWC&R participant receives a registration-included copy.  There are still spaces available at the CWC&R, so please see the CWC website for information if you’d like to join us.  If you’re not able to join us, please consider supporting Clockhouse by pre-ordering a copy the Clockhouse website.  Clockhouse is published by CWC in partnership with Goddard College, and we think there’s much for the entire community to be proud of as it presents its Volume Six authors! 

 

On Legacy and Hope: A Note from Editorial Director Sarah Cedeño

Finally, spring hits, and, as always, it hits like summer in western New York. It’s snow, it’s snow, it’s snow, and the next day, I can sleep with the windows open; I rush to put the flea and tick medication on my dogs; my son arranges the porch furniture. We can finally put the snow shovel away.
During the swift turn to warmth, spring signals me to write the last Note from the Editorial Director after a rewarding three-year term at Clockhouse. I try to write about ending, though how can I not think about beginnings with the leaves sprouting and tulips blooming and the bag of garden soil in my trunk?
Think about these last three years. The election. The racial tension and violence that came before and after. Standing with Standing Rock. Immigration bans. Walls. The ‘Me too’ movement. The healing that’s happened and the healing yet to be done. And the most tender moments have to do with touching the scars and calling them our own or acknowledging others’ scars, that some come from deeper wounds. Wounds that have long been neglected their salve. It seems like this hasn’t much to do with beginning and endings, but I can’t help but think it does. You’ll see how when you visit the pieces in this issue.
In “But All This Comes After,” Chad B. Anderson seamlessly captures the nostalgia of the narrator for his parents’ interracial relationship before he was born—nostalgia that carries through his own wedding day. In Georgette Kelly’s “Fragile Filigree Love,” a woman and her grandmother discuss and connect through generations of turmoil, generations of gendered emotions, and limitations on love. A father’s sports fandom teaches about humanity and grief in “I For-give You, Craig Ehlo, For What Happened With Jordan in ’89.”
This issue’s Folio, curated by Keenan Norris, shows that our scars are shared through generations, and that the word scars only implies
they have healed. In Soma Mei Sheng Frazier’s fiction, the narrator explores her parents’ intersection of culture and orientation. Juan Delgado and Nikia Chaney’s provocative imagery of gender and class in San Bernardino doesn’t shy away from its reality, a legacy both tender and beautiful. Both hairnets and orange groves.
Michael Klein’s interview with Marie Howe encourages writers and artists to think forward. To see art as legacy, but also an act.
Legacy spans endings and beginnings and lasts longer than any spring bud or the life of a snow shovel, but examines them anyway. It leaves to a generation what it has taken from the last. Clockhouse Volume Six pays homage to legacy—sometimes brutal, sometimes beautiful, always complex. Legacy, as exemplified through the work in this issue, always leaves room for hope. I’m so grateful to leave readers this issue of Clockhouse and its wide breadth of memory and wisdom.