Editor's Note

Greetings, dear readers! I’m writing this editorial right on the cusp of the winter solstice and we at carte blanche are so pleased to present our last issue of 2021, issue 42. 

You might also be noticing a not-so-little change with the look of our website. It’s been a long time coming but the entire masthead and I are so proud to present this new and updated look for our online magazine. Many thanks to Erin Lindsay, our Blog Editor and Communications Manager, for taking on this mighty endeavor, as well as to our Managing Editor, Zoe Shaw, who has so diligently pieced together the issue that you are reading now. We invite you to browse the new carte blanche and take a good look around! 

As for issue 42, this past summer we created an open-themed submissions call for writers and artists living with disabilities to submit their work and we are so excited to share their work with you here. As someone learning to live with chronic and invisible disabilities myself, it has been an important goal of mine to further broaden carte blanche’s platform to include celebrating stories and artwork created by individuals who live with disabilities, however they may identify or define disability.

While issue 42 features writers and artists who identify with the above criteria, there was no theme for contributors to follow. Whenever we have an open theme, however, I have often found it fascinating to notice words, ideas, and patterns that may be floating around in our collective consciousness. Upon reading through the contents of this issue, with thanks to the thoughtful curation of carte blanche’s section editors, I noticed unintentional themes pop up which helped, in my mind, thread many of our storytellers’ pieces together.

Keep a lookout for creative works touching on queer identity, intimacy, and everyday life, like in Vrnq Synnott’s short hybrid creative nonfiction piece “Expect What Happened to Happen Again,” in Nnadi Samuel’s poem “Non-Binary Worship,” Rasha Abdulhadi’s aquatic poems, and in the unrequited teenage coming-of-age love story “Always and Always” by Sara Sherr.

The constantly evolving nature of the self, a focus on language, and experimentation with form appear in works like Jane Shi’s “balloon,” in “Via Negativa” by Jake Byrne where Byrne’s speaker says: “I cannot explain to you / How I came to be here. All I know / Is that I am here, that my words had worth,” and in Khashayar Mohammadi’s poem where a psychotic episode provides the background for “Psychotic’s Prayer or the Sufi Path to Synthetic Nihilo.”

I noticed striking animal imagery such as in the fantastical story “Speed Bump” by Bára Hladík, where whales, snakes, cockroaches, and maggots intermingle or in Sunshine Barbito’s “Rag and Bone” where the protagonist must deal with awkward family dynamics in the aftermath of both the death of her father and upon finding a dead rat. Other distinctive animal themed pieces include the cartoon foxes and swans in “The Age-Old Conflict” comic by Oreganillo. and in Conyer Clayton’s “Smol Bird,” where the speaker finds a kinship with tiny birds.

This issue, of course, features pieces that don’t fall into any of the named categories. I’m thinking of Sue Murtagh’s story “Lost Purse” which touches on memory, loss, and family conflict and Margo LaPierre’s poignant creative nonfiction piece featuring actress Juliette Lewis, an unborn child, and a kidnapping from an Atlanta parking lot.

There are a couple of works in issue 42 that we would like to highlight, as well. Firstly, with our interest in providing a welcoming space for marginalized and racialized voices of all kinds, we are honoured to feature a series by Béla Váradi, who has through his work in photojournalism been representing the lives of Roma people in Hungary for decades. 

Secondly, we are thrilled to feature a text and audio version of M-X Marin’s “Sickness in Limbo” which was the 2nd place winner of the 2021 carte blanche prize. Here is juror Gillian Sze’s citation about Marin’s creative nonfiction piece:

“Sickness in Limbo” by M-X Marin is a candid and incisive account of illness—not as a transient state that must be overcome, but as a fact of being that organizes life. Generous, poetic, and unfaltering, the writer navigates between experience and illusion, despair and hope, solitude and amity, the intimate and the clinical. “Sickness is to be lived … Healing is a labyrinth,” Marin writes. The suchness of this reality coincides with a looming winter backdrop and the inevitable turn to spring.

During the production of issue 42, we were excited to welcome Liana Cusmano, our new Fiction Editor, to the team. Stay tuned for Cusmano’s introductory post in the new year! We also want to acknowledge Jenny Ferguson, who has been working as a mentor to 2021 Fresh Pages mentee, Poonam Dhir. They have been curating the Creative Nonfiction section of carte blanche together throughout 2021, and this will be Ferguson’s final issue with us as the Creative Nonfiction section editor.

We recognize that there’s still much work to do to improve conversations around disabilities, accessibility, and mental health in mainstream spaces and throughout the literary community. But we hope that by reaching out to intersectional voices of all kinds and having creators entrust us with sharing their stories with you, our readers, that venues like this one in carte blanche issue 42 helps foster a space for us all to become more educated, open, and generous citizens of the world.

Take care, keep warm, and stay safe during these upcoming winter months.

Greg Santos, 
Editor-in-Chief
Montréal, December 20, 2021