Our seventh print annual (+ 2016 Prize nominees!)

Each print issue of apt represents a year worth of work. When I started reading submissions last March, when I accepted the first pieces you’ll see after this note, I lived in a very different country. Geographically, it’s the same. But psychically, it’s been maimed. I’m afraid for what’s ahead, and I write from what most would call a “blue bubble,” far removed from the violence that many Americans face in the wake of our presidential election. But the dread I feel colors everything. The dread over what was not a lost, but a stolen, election. And don’t misunderstand. I voted in and lived through the presidential election of 2000. I know the difference between disappointment and fear.

I mention this here because we’ve always supported writing that respects women. Everyone has an opinion about Hillary Clinton, and regardless of what yours is, we can all agree that the election—indeed, the entire campaign cycle—was stolen from her. She didn’t get to address all the ways in which she planned to make our country better. Instead, she had to bicker with a man-child who spouted the worst sort of rhetoric, the worst sort of writing, in order to validate a small part of the US population’s hatred for a woman who wanted to make sure that more Americans had access to a peaceful existence. NB: That’s not a president’s job, per se. But that’s what she campaigned on: equality. And fuck, look at what we have instead.

The First Amendment is being threatened. Our method of voicing dissent. Our right to demand that we, as humans, can govern our own lives. That women can govern their own bodies, as just so happens in every story and poem in this issue. Whether overtly or less so, women are front and center here. As daughters, as teachers, as waitresses, as orphans, as targets—women get shit done. For us and for themselves. And so often, they don’t get praise, but when they don’t, they don’t call foul. Because they (we) know it’s more important to get back to work.

I dedicate this issue to two women: Hillary Rodham Clinton, and our first female president. Whoever she is. She exists. I can only hope she’ll be qualified as HRC. We need that now, still, and even more so going forward.

Carissa Halston
Editor-in-Chief