Letter from the Editors for the Winter 2020 Edition

Jessica Weible, Executive Editor of The Watershed Journal

Across continents and across cultures, many people take the new year as a time to make promises. Maybe it’s the promise of self-improvement, the promise of fiscal responsibility, or the promise of a new destination. We make pledges, sign contracts, and shake hands to seal our promises, then do our best to hold true, with varying levels of success, throughout the year. We know that promises are fragile things, easily stifled or silenced, so we admire those who have the discipline to keep a promise; we are grateful to those who care deeply enough to be mindful of their promises. 

The Winter Edition of The Watershed Journal is unique in that with this edition we are making a promise to our submitters, readers and supporters. We promise to spend this year reaching out to the people of the Western Pennsylvania Wilds, encouraging them to share their stories with us. We promise to carefully collect that work and use every opportunity, skill and resource we have to shine a light on it. We promise to make space and time for everyone in our community to gather together and celebrate that work so that we can absorb it and be changed by it. We promise to continue our mission to empower and elevate the stories of our region for another year.

The stories, poems, essays, artwork and photography in this edition all demonstrate our promise. In a flurry of editing, design and revision, we have worked to enhance the unique voice of each page. Our submitters are exploring an emotional range that takes the reader from curiosity to laughter to anguish to revelation, to love. The reader may find pieces that reinforce each other, or some that contradict each other. We take them as they are and offer them as an important contribution to the culture of our region.

In 2020, The Watershed Journal will continue to be a literary publication devoted to inclusivity. We promise to put into practice our core belief that our stories matter. Most of all, we thank you for the innumerable ways that you have helped make it all possible.