Editor's Note

We hope you had a great holiday season and New Year's! We're proud to kick off the first issue of 2009 with a High Five from Leni Zumas, the author of the collection Farewell Navigator (Open City Books, 2008). Zumas weaves disquieting, fantastical, brutal, and warming stories of the lonely, the desperate, the weird, the lovely. As soon as I read Leni's collection, I had to know what was on her bookshelf, and I hope you'll find Leni's picks as equally as compelling as I did.

We have a lot of great new fiction in this issue. We're always grateful for the weird, dark, but gentle stories people send us, full of damaged, redemptive characters that burn like flames under the page, and we've especially proud of featuring this bunch. We also offer five quality poems from new and established poets.

Our featured artist, Michael Cantor, is a fixture of Baltimore's quirky, charming landscape. In addition to his quiet, thoughtful portraits, Michael has anchored Salamander Books in the hipster neighborhood of Hampden for years as well as being one half of Baltimore Interview with frequent jmww contributor Joseph Young. Althought we in Baltimore have seen Michael's subjects every day, on the sreet, at parties and openings and restaurants, we often really see them for the first time in Michael's camera frame. We hope you'll enjoy Michael's perspective as much as we do.

Keep an eye out for the jmww anthology III which, with any luck, will be available in early February. We're especially excited to provide with the best of last year's online issues in one handy, portable edition. And because we want people to read them, they'll be as cheap as always, and available from PayPal. Thanks again for visiting, and keep coming back.

Jen Michalski, Editor