Atlantis Meets Mir

On this very day in 1995 the American space shuttle Atlantis docked with the Russian space station Mir to create the largest man-made satellite to ever orbit the Earth. It's amazing the things that can be accomplished when people, teams, and astronauts work together.

While sometimes writing may seem to be a solitary effort, we must not forget the fun, the inspiration, the craft lessons, and the new words we learn when writers come together and share their words, their thoughts.

At IR we love to celebrate collaboration. It is a collaborative effort to read through all the submissions, to figure out where commas go, and in the end, most importantly, the finished copy is a coming together of many voices in poems, in stories, and essays, to create a unified (and beautiful) issue.

Just look at the fruit of collaboration: the largest man-made satellite, our latest issue of 31.1. Have you not seen it yet? You can order it online.

--Alessandra

can you do this in a poem?

Many people wonder how exactly we decide what to publish. What do we look for in a poem? What quality makes one piece of art leap out of the slush pile and into the magazine, while others quietly pass on to other hands, other venues?











This snowman, an image of the Hindu god Ganesh, was created on the main street in Mussoorie, India, a town in the Himalayan foothills. Out of the slush...art.

Now do this. But in a poem.

--Hannah