Dear Reader,
It is my pleasure to share with you the news that Literary Matters will indeed, after a touch-and-go interval, continue. I’m grateful to all who wrote me with concern after reading my note at the head of issue 16.3. While this issue will be the final issue of my tenure as Editor-in-Chief, I will stay on in an advisory capacity as Editor Emeritus. Submissions are officially open. Please follow the guidelines under the Submissions tab on our website. Meanwhile, I hope you’ll help me welcome the new Editor-in-Chief, Matt Steinhafel, who will also be replacing me as the CFO and Office Manager for the ALSCW.
John Matthew “Matt” Steinhafel was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In 2017, Steinhafel graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. In 2020, he earned an M.F.A. from Western Kentucky University. His creative work has appeared in such venues as Plainsongs and Every Day Fiction, among others. He expects to complete his Ph.D. this fall at The Catholic University of America, where he currently teaches American Literature. His research examines the reciprocal relationship between experiences of race and stylistic experiment in works of narrative fiction from the mid to late twentieth century and into the twenty-first. To this end, his dissertation traces Ralph Ellison’s influence on writers of our time, examining how and why Ellison’s work and thought continue to inform the formal techniques by which today’s most prominent writers conceptualize and examine race and identity in their work. Steinhafel’s scholarship has appeared in such venues as The Journal of the T. S. Eliot Society (UK) and The Robert Frost Review, among others. He has delivered papers at conferences of numerous professional societies, including the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers, the Robert Penn Warren Circle, C19: The Society of Nineteenth Century Americanists, the International T. S. Eliot Society, and the American Literature Association. In 2022 he received the Eleanor Clark Award from the Robert Penn Warren Circle. He now serves as a member of the board of the Robert Penn Warren Circle. In addition to the RPW Circle and the ALSCW, he is an active member of the International T. S. Eliot Society and the Ralph Ellison Society.
For now, I want to thank the members of my editorial team who are leaving the journal after many years of distinguished service and to thank you, dear reader, for your support. I hope that you’ll enjoy this issue and a look back at a few selections from my tenure as Editor-in-Chief. It’s been an honor.
Long live LM.
Excelsior,
RW