Editor’s Note

This year’s editorial sessions left us hungry at the end of class. Thirsty. Ready for more. This year’s theme of Food brought us to many surprising places, from a hospital cafeteria to a mother’s kitchen. It fed us Ube and Blue Tea and the mythological Apple of Discord, then mixed in equal parts butter and glitter glue. This issue is a testament to the endless possibilities inherent of food as something that binds us together, whether that be as an emblem of love or as a potential weapon. 

One surprising, re-occurring take on this year’s theme of Food was a thematic attention of cannibalism and of eating those who we love, particularly eating parents, as seen in Gray Birchby’s sensorially provocative short story Radiance. Our slush pile looked a lot like an inverse version of Francisco Goya’s horrifying painting Saturn Devouring His Son. Beyond the initial shock and taboo of cannibalism, however, is a brilliant allegory for consumption in a tumultuous, angry era, for the Ouroboros of inherited family trauma. Can we blame Generation Z for a bitterness toward older generations for leaving behind a burning planet, tattered and firebombed geopolitical relations, an educational system dangling above the mouths of crocodiles? This is further exemplified in Samantha Strohbusch’s short story The Man or the Bear, where a bite is vengeance, where the consumed fight back. And, though it is not connected to the theme of food on the surface, Abbie Galipeau’s flash-memoir Aeropostale at the Burlington Mall is in kinship with these two stories for its attention to the intersection of capitalism and gender, where young women are eaten with eyes.

So how do we save consumption from its destructive impulse, one that devours land, water, animal, and human life with nothing left in return? One student editor asks us to turn to literature as a form of nourishment, a blood transfusion, an antidote for the world today. Another points to a generational craving for sustenance, a cleanse from that which does not serve us, whether that be AI-generated propaganda or bigoted rhetoric that convinces the public to pathologize difference rather than celebrate it. This year’s author interview with Chavonn Williams Shen, whose debut book of poetry Still Life With Rope And River was released with Finishing Line Press this fall, impelled us to consider how the media consumes Black grief, to consider the tangible legacy of sharecropping in their family’s history, asking us to consider who grows the food we eat today.

A literary journal is a perfect palate cleanser for our society’s current existential peril. A dinner table where everyone’s story is welcome, wanted, and praised. Williams Shen also asks us to consider what seeds can be planted today to insure a more loving and just harvest tomorrow. The editorial process teaches us to find common ground, to sincerely listen to each other, to respect different ways of seeing, reading, and writing. The future of literature in an era of heavy censorship is uncertain – but when has it ever been a sure thing? We keep planting our seeds, keep feeding our neighbors. Break bread with us today. Raise a glass to this year’s contributing writers and student editors, who spent countless hours reading submissions all semester. A most sincere toast to Elizabeth Carls, our intrepid teaching assistant this year, and to Meghan Maloney-Vinz, head chef of all the moving parts that make Runestone possible. We hope you savor all the flavors prepared for you. That you savor the spice and juice that makes literature, in all its complexity, simply delicious. 

Miigwech,
Halee Kirkwood

Halee Kirkwood is a genre-fluid writer living in Minneapolis. They were an inaugural and returning Indigenous Nations Poets (IN-NA-PO) fellow, a Tin House Summer Workshop alum, a 2023-2025 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, and a 2022 Minnesota State Arts Board grant recipient. Kirkwood is the winner of the 2022 James Welch Poetry Prize, published with Poetry Northwest. Their poetry and prose can be found in Prairie Schooner, Poetry Magazine, Poem-A-Day, Ecotone, and others. They are a first generation direct descendant of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe. Their debut poetry collection, To Think Of A Match, will be published in winter 2027 with Northwestern University Press.