HeartWood Literary Magazine is celebrating ten years!

We are honored to mark the occasion of our twentieth issue the same way we have the first nineteen—by sharing with our readers the poetry and prose that we find endeavors to uncover, discover, or recover something real, some fundamental truth, at its core.

The founders of HeartWood were inspired by author Karen Salyer McElmurray, and our faithful readers will recall the interview in our Fall 2020 Issue, which featured an excerpt of her essay “Heartwood” that expands on what it means. From the beginning, we have intended to share work that goes beyond the surface and gets to the heart of the matter. A lot has changed in the last decade, but this remains the beating heart of HeartWood.

In ten years of working with HeartWood, first as a Poetry Editor and now as Managing Editor, I have been reflecting and find, most of all, I am overwhelmed by gratitude. There are so many people to whom praise is due because HeartWood simply wouldn’t exist without its community of writers, readers, and editors. To each and every writer who has shared their work with us, we are so grateful. To our contributors, we thank you for trusting us with your work and allowing us to share it with our readers. To our readers, thank you for supporting our magazine and its contributors and for always helping to share it with a wider audience.

And finally, there are those who have volunteered their time to reviewing the many hundreds of submissions we receive twice a year, the folks who haven’t just made HeartWood possible all these years but ARE HeartWood. I dedicate this 20th Issue of HeartWood to our editors and advisors, past and present:

Suzanne “Sam” Bowyer-McWhorter
Torli Bush
C.M. Chapman
Kevin Chesser
Elizabeth Damewood Gaucher
Mary Carroll-Hackett
Beth Feagan
Susan Good
Julia Kastner
Danielle Kelley
Lara Lillibridge
Brittany Morgan
Allison Pugh
Gabriel Rogers
Mary Imo Stike
Vince Trimboli
Larry D. Thacker
Doug Van Gundy
Jesse van Eerden

In Memoriam
Rachel Hicks

We invite you to read Issue 20 here.

Sincerely,

Jessica Spruill Waggoner