We launched The Watershed Journal literary magazine two years ago with a dream of increasing the opportunities for the storytellers who make their home in our region. Now, ten issues later, we have seen over a thousand submissions from submitters across ten Pennsylvania counties and have published every single eligible submitter. 

We have chosen Wayne Swanger’s poetry collection, Fields of His Heart, as our first long-form publication and are eager to share this excellent book with you later this year. And we are on the brink of opening Watershed Books – a bookstore and literary arts center – right on Main Street in Brookville.

Looking back at how far we’ve come in two years, it is increasingly clear to us the importance of our core roots and principles. The ideas that have driven us from the beginning, the people who have stood beside us, continue to guide our vision as we tumble into new ventures. Our greatest ambition is to continue to serve our area of the Pennsylvania Wilds.

We believe in the talent and perspectives of our region. Several local writers, photographers and artists have found success in publishing recently and at Watershed Books we will be able to shine a spotlight on these regional works. We are eager to see even more from our veteran writers, and are excited by the fact that a fifth of our total submitters are new to us. The Watershed Books literary arts space will allow us to increase public participation in storytelling activities and events, even while adhering to CDC and state guidelines.

Looking around us at the general state of 2020 and looking ahead to 2021, we at The Watershed Journal Literary group are highly motivated to emphasize the literary arts in our area. We share a deeply-ingrained love for story here and have seen how powerful the sharing of diverse stories can be.