Dear Readers,

When we launched Waterwheel Review, we were keen to explain why we were so moved and motivated by the image of the waterwheel. Water stands for language, an ever flowing, renewable source; the waterwheel, an engine of labor, circles through, lifting words and then dropping them back into the running stream. Our magazine is a mill, we said, where the waterwheel powers writing and publishing. “We want—and need—to make things.”

For a couple of years, now, we have known that we can’t make enough of our own things while we give so much energy to the work of others. We have had to cut substantially the time and attention devoted to our own writing, and mostly we have been glad to do it, determined to find a way to repay our own work in the end. We never did find that way.

If we could quit our jobs and earn that income publishing this magazine, we would take that deal in an instant. But that’s not the world we live in. For many, many months we have known this, but we couldn’t accept it until now. And thank goodness for that.

Every single issue of this magazine has been a wonder that transported and enchanted us. We can’t say we gloried in every moment. We read or edited or built the site at times while sick, exhausted, grieving—that’s the nature of any publication. But we damn well gloried in every word, every paired image and sound.

Four years and thirty-six issues: What an honor to publish our contributors. What a privilege to offer stunning work to our readers. We must use the word pleasure, too, always rolled out to accompany “honor and privilege,” but pleasure isn’t strong enough, nor is gratitude nor joy nor blessing. For once we find ourselves at a loss for words to express precisely what it has meant to keep this waterwheel turning.

Maybe this will do it: How many times does anyone ever fully achieve the glittering, half-glimpsed vision floating above; that winking, flirting piece of art we ache to manifest? For the three of us, precisely this once.

We will keep making things and so will you. We started this magazine with the image of the waterwheel and a Jean Rhys quote, and we will end in the same way, as we thank you for reading and submitting, and wish you and yours all the very best:

Listen to me. All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. And there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don’t matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.

—Claire, Suzanne, Cheryl

September 1, 2024: Waterwheel Review will stay online for the foreseeable future. It remains as it looked for the final June 2024 issue.

January 1, 2021 By Suzanne Farrell Smith

Editor’s Note Issue #5

January 2021

Editor’s Note

“This is a day to remember, frankly, in a year to forget.” — British Health Secretary Hancock, announcing approval of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine.

Hancock was half-right.

We have, with one second ticking to midnight, put 2020 behind us. But we will not forget. Like any grief, we carry 2020 forward, to reckon with, to peel apart. To name.

In my October editor’s note, I asked why we should make art now, in this time of anxiety and hardship. As one answer, I talked about the artist’s drive to document catastrophe. Now I turn to January, and our fifth issue, mulling all that art can do.

2020 is over. The end of the beginning. For most of us—medical professionals, first responders, politicians, scientists, essential workers, historians, economists, teachers, parents, students, loved ones of the sick and dead—the reckoning has started. For artists, too.

Our January authors grapple with aftermath. Zebulon Huset sketches the inevitability of loss. Sarah Twombly portrays what happens to a woman when her unseen and unbearable load finally takes its toll. And Heather Diamond traces adult choices to a girlhood game that forces children to peer into an uncertain future.

January’s companions also steer me into the new year. Pulses of turmoil, mistrust, fear, and loss accompany Zebulon and Sarah’s pieces, while Heather’s friend, artist Sandra York, conveys a hopeful step toward something new. And ice skater Tiina Pakkenan, in the most moving short film I’ve ever seen, shows us that sometimes, what nature and the human body create together is wondrous.

Why make art now? Art asks big questions, captures human experience in disasters global and local, brings solace and joy, and more. It will do all of these things, always.

Informed by our individual and collective memory of the year that was, we are poised to tell the story. A decade, a generation, a lifetime of art is about to unfold.

Suzanne Farrell Smith