Spring 2007
Edited by Kevin Standifer

I am pleased to point out that for the first time in my tenure as editor, male writers are in the minority for this quarter's issue of SWELL. Appropriate to this shift in perspective, themes of identity emerge in much of the work contained herein. Our lone male voice proudly and humorously claims the territory that comes attached to his sexual identity. The other characters confront the struggle with and consequences of applying labels to themselves and those around them: What does it mean to be vanilla, or butch, or an ex-drunk? We also get a moving report from the trenches of real-life identity politics, in which a poet illustrates her transition from being male to being female by taking her words from a women's magazine. Even the artwork selected for the cover begins with something ordinary-- a furniture catalog-- and transcends its humble, mass-produced origins. Such feats of transformation remind us that no matter what we are made of, we can still make something new out of our same old selves.