A huge thank you to our editorial team

Our editorial team has been working closely with our Issue 17 contributors to bring their pieces to life.

At the Seventh Wave, our annual magazine is at the heart of everything we do, which means our editorial team is the heartbeat that keeps it thrumming. Beginning in 2020, we expanded our team from a core group of three to a larger team of 12; since then, we’ve brought on numerous past contributors to serve as editors for the magazine, a tradition that we see as a way for writers and artists to keep paying it forward.

For Issue 17: The Cost of Waiting, we enlisted the help of our brilliant TSW editors to help us select, edit, and nurture each piece toward publication. Our editorial process is an intimate one: our nine editors spent a total of three months working with their contributors to help the work become the best version of itself. Ahead of the launch of our latest issue, then, we wanted to take a moment to say “thank you!” to our incredible editorial team, who poured so much attention and care into these pieces to bring them out into the world.

You can learn a little more about each editor below.

Briana Gwin

Senior Prose Editor

"I'm interested in work that functions as connective tissue: between genres, between languages, between organisms, between the micro and the macro, between the individual and the collective. I'm interested in exploring the ways we can step outside of ourselves even while interrogating our own interiorities. I'm interested in telling the same story a hundred different ways. I'm interested in beginning with the fifth paragraph. I'm interested in work that tugs at the heart and sways the mind."

Emilie Menzel

Senior Poetry Editor

"I believe in poetry as a way of finding language for what does not yet have words, and I believe that verbalizing an experience carries a power and authority people do not always give to emotion. I write for people whose powerful emotional knowledge is not taken fully seriously by others — often women — and so when I write, I think most of those who came before me."

Stuti Pachisia

Poetry Editor

"I am deeply interested in supporting and promoting poets and writers whose existence (and work) is marginalised. As Audre Lorde says, poetry is not a luxury; and I see poetry as a field that challenges undue power. I am especially keen to support poets, artists and creators in the Global South, whose experiences often get pigeonholed into simplistic narratives."

Elizabeth Upshur

Poetry Editor

"My goal is to hold space for Black women like myself and our stories, and to also help make space for all the intersections of POC who aren’t me. My creative found family includes a lot of Latinx and South Asian writers, so those are the communities that have inspired, influenced, and encouraged me as a writer."

Jules Chung

Assitant Editor, Prose

"I write for anyone who finds beauty to be a salve for loneliness and for anyone with a mordant sense of humor. I think about people who feel like oddballs. I try to hold space for both believers and doubters, for the serene and the angry, the dutiful and the rebellious. I’m constantly thinking about women — daughters, sisters, friends, loners, lovers — and the ways in which they might have to be creative, wily, or bold."

Ivy Raff

Assistant Editor, Poetry

"For me, community equals mutual aid. I heard someone say today that life problems are like tissues in a box. You rip one out, and a new one pops up right behind it. Community is whomever witnesses your tissue box, and vice versa. For a lot of people, it’s one’s culture of origin. For me it’s other artists."

Maria Picone

Assistant Editor, Poetry

"I write to my younger self and the spaces she longed to see filled in, the ineffable she wanted to express. For a reality check, it’s my cat who keeps me humble and grounded in the world and who will happily inject the artistic touch of his paws into my work just when I don’t need it."

Maya Garcia Fisher

Assistant Editor, Poetry

"I tend to be a bit of a loner when I write, but I do bring my ancestors with me everywhere I go and in everything I do, in the same way I think we are all weighed down and lifted up by those who came before us. Remembering the people who came before me, as well as all the struggles they faced in their lives, puts my own life and experiences into perspective. If I am struggling with something in my life, I remember that I have ancestors who survived wars and still made lives for themselves."

Jerica Taylor

Assistant Editor, Poetry

"[The person whom I bring into the room when I create is] a seeker of joy, and they make the choice to reflect or pursue, with acceptance and awe. [I hold space in my work for] fellow survivors. Queer and trans journeypeople on this boardwalk path."

Issue 17: The Cost of Waiting will launch on Wednesday, June 5, with spotlights on each of our 16 contributors all throughout the coming days. If you are a past contributor interested in joining our editorial team, feel free to reach out to us at info@seventhwavemag.com for more information.

Our editorial team has been working closely with our Issue 17 contributors to bring their pieces to life.

Briana Gwin

Emilie Menzel

Stuti Pachisia

Elizabeth Upshur

Jules Chung

Ivy Raff

Maria Picone

Maya Garcia Fisher

Jerica Taylor

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