We are pleased to announce the first edition of Znine and would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who made it possible.

The quality of submissions from established writers, neophytes and everyone in between was astounding. We spent hours reviewing and discussing submissions--the problem we faced was not what to include, but what must be omitted for one reason or another. We think all editors faced with the dilemma of an overabundance of good work would feel privileged; and we did. So thank you, writers.

We would also like to thank Robert Lee Brewer, the editor of Writers Market.com and its Market Update Newsletter for taking the time out of his hectic schedule to contribute an article entitled Nine Ways To Promote Your Writing Through Your Website. Admittedly, not all of us are at the stage in our writing careers where we are ready to promote our work, but if (and when) we are, Robert's advice will be most beneficial.

Much thanks goes out to Carlos Carrillo, a well-established artist, for his contribution of "Subnegative," which we used for our cover art. We are also grateful to Wendy Faris for lending her artistic talents to this first issue as well.

In addition to being a talented artist, Wendy Faris (Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, Harvard, 1975) is a professor in the English department at The University Of Texas At Arlington, where she teaches courses on modern and contemporary literature. She is the author of Carlos Fuentes (Ungar, 1983); Labyrinths of Language: Symbolic Landscape and Narratiev Design in Modern Fiction (Johns Hopkins, 1988); and, with Lois Parkinson Zamora, the editor of Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community (Duke, 1995). She is currently finishing a book on magical realism. In the field of interarts comparisons she has published an article on "The 'Dehumanization' of the Arts: J.M.W. Turner, Joseph Conrad, and the Advent of Modernism," Comparative Literature, 41, iv (1989), 305-26 and "Larger than Life: The Hyperbolic Realities of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Fernando Botero," Word & Image, 17, iv (2001), 339-59."Mallarme at the Institute"

According to Wendy, "Mallarme at the Institute" is one of a series of paintings done in the woods at the Princeton Institute of Advanced Studies, where a sculpture in the form of a black cube is set among the trees--hence the title and the square form overhung with branches. The sculpture brought to mind the Wallace Stevens poem "Anecdote of the Jar" in which he implies that placing a jar on a hill in Tennessee somehow constellates a landscape: "It made the slovenly wilderness / Surround that hill." Wendy experienced the block in the Institute woods as such a "jar," a structure that served to organize an otherwise relatively unformed landscape. Mallarme is included because he had the idea of a "book of the world," a text that contains the world, and also wrote a poem about an obscure dark block fallen from above: "Calme bloc ici-bas chu d'un desastre obscur" ("Calm block dropped from a dark catastrophe"). As Wendy did the series of drawings, for some obscure reason, those two ideas came together and the obscure fallen block merges with a book that grows out of and organizes the world around it. In this partiular drawing, the sun rises from the block/book, which is a shape that constellates the landscape, forming a part of it, and making it intelligible, somewhat as Mallarme's book of the world encompasses the world and begins to make it intelligible, but also, like his dropped block, remains unfathomable, opening out toward somewhere else.

The other two images Wendy contributed are part of a larger ribbon-painting entitled "Spirit House." We were much impressed with the way in which each of these pieces seemed to stand alone to create a whole even though they are actually parts of another piece. We were reminded of the way in which a collection of short stories that contain similar characters and settings can be read as complete pieces, but when read together create an entirely different "image" for the reader. We are grateful to Wendy for allowing us to share her work with you, our readers.

And, finally, we would like to offer our most sincere thanks and gratitude to everyone who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to make our dream of Znine a reality. Tim Morris, who is the chair of UTA's English department, is our acting advisor. His insightful input and helpful comments kept us on track throughout the creative process. Robert Leston, a GTA in the English department, patiently worked to help us format Wendy Faris' beautiful images. Kate Simpson and Liz Helton, both English majors at UTA, created the original template from which the Znine site emerged. And Chris Murray, the Director of UTA's Writing Center, Toni Manning, a GTA in the English department and Donna Brown, a lecturer in the English department, worked together as editors to select all pieces that would be included in this first issue. Thank you, everyone.

And happy reading to all.

Znine's Editorial Staff