Hello, friends!

Welcome to the April Pop Culture issue, our grandest issue of the year, jammed packed with nougatty pop culture goodness! In this issue you'll find everything from praise for Saul Goodman to condemnation of Hugh Hefner. From poetry to fiction to film crit, this annual extravaganza of sights and sounds is sure to amaze at best, and at worst kill an hour or two of your time.

Recently I've found myself really indulging in cinema more than I have in the past; I'll admit around 2017 I fell away from movies in favor of more feel-good programming like Great British Baking Show or The Good Place. The world fucking sucks a lot of the time, and I didn't want to indulge in any more suffering than I had to. God forbid I relive the physical pain I felt watching Christine in 2016. But at the beginning of this year my husband and I started doing themed movie months: giallo, horny, action, cinematographic masterpieces, and it's been so amazing to revisit old favorites and discover new ones (I'm probably the last on earth to see Paris,Texas).  Additionally, I've started going to the movies a lot more on my own, which I had never done prior to this year. Consuming this much film media has profoundly increased my appreciation of it, as well as informed my own writing. Can't beat that, especially as someone who is working on a few scripts of my own.

I feel like every year I try to write some schmaltzy nonsense akin to what they blather on about at the beginning of the Oscars, and I'm not going to do that here. Instead I'm going to say this: pop culture is important to me, and sure it's important to you too, in its own way. Whether you're losing a full day of work because of the Scandoval or weeping over a double feature of Too Wong Fu and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, whether you're rocking out to the Inferno score or yelling at Ticketmaster over the price of Taylor Swift tickets, pop culture is there to entertain you, nourish you, or fill some time until your next great adventure.

Now for some news: we reopen for all categories on May 1 and will remain open through June. Our chapbook press is busy getting Candice Kelsey's Choose Your Own Poem ready (you can preorder it OR purchase a subscription to our 2022/23 catalog here) and then we'll be at work on Trapper Markelz's Childproof Sky and Cathleen Conway's Nocturnes. Watch for those preorders, coming soon.

I hope you have a lovely spring. 

Always, 

KCH