“A Continual Flight from Wonder”: Photograph by Joseph Stern. Winner of the 2021 International Photography Awards.
“A Continual Flight from Wonder”: Photograph by Joseph Stern. Winner of the 2021 International Photography Awards.
A Note on This Issue
Poetry
Hadara Bar-Nadav, Touchless Entry
Nancy Chen Long, Orbit
Jose Hernandez Diaz, The Golden Telescope
Jennifer H. Dracos-Tice, On Learning Your Birth Mother Might Have Watched You Swing
Jenny Hykes Jiang, China Virus
Edward Mayes, Nor Any Know I Know the Art and ‘Tis News As Null As Nothing
Monica Rico, Why I Don’t Go to Church
Jieyan Wang, letter to a drowned poet and exiled parts of my body
Fiction
Bipin Aurora, The Scooter-Rickshaw Driver
Aiden Baker, Blue Faced Honey Eater
Christina Leo, Northern Lights
Christopher Linforth, Sojourn
Robert Brian Mulder, Goodbye to Mr. Wonderfull
Jennifer Ritenour, The Little Mermaid
Tara Isabel Zambrano, Shabnam Salamat
Non-Fiction
Andi Brown, Unscented
Sean Enfield, All My Niggas Was White – Notes From the Color Line
Jade Hidle, Letter to a Mỹ Lai Mother
Mee Ok Icaro, Queer Seoul
Cover Art: “A Continual Flight from Wonder” by Joseph Stern. A note from the artist: Albert Einstein said, “The process of scientific discovery is, in effect, a continual flight from wonder.” This photo shows the initial ascent. Artist bio: Joseph Stern is a writer and photographer. He is originally from Montreal and now lives in China.
Witness blends the features of a literary and an issue-oriented magazine to highlight the role of the modern writer as witness to his or her times. Launched in Detroit in 1987, the magazine is best known for showcasing work that defines its historical moment; special issues have focused on political oppression, religion, the natural world, crime, aging, civil rights, love, ethnic America, and exile. The issues “New Nature Writing,” “The Sixties,” “Sports in America,” and “The Best of Witness, 1987 – 2004” eventually appeared as university press anthologies. In 2007, Witness moved to Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The magazine publishes one print issue and one online issue a year, and increasingly seeks out work that contextualizes the American experience by highlighting issues of global concern.
