Flight 1 Now Live!

Editor's Intro

Hangovers are strange creatures. They show up when you expect them (after seven Jager Bombs at a bachelor party) and when you don’t (after a sleepless night of crying over a breakup). They are an experience so universal the word has come to serve as a stand-in in the cultural lexicon for that unique cocktail of pain and regret. Flight: A Literary Sampler first came to be in part because one of the editors desperately needed a distraction from a particularly wicked post-AWP hangover, so it seemed like the perfect theme for our first issue. 

For Flight 1, we solicited writers whose work we admire deeply as a way to show future submitters what we hope to publish. The writers we solicited were invited to submit a piece related to this theme of “hangovers,” however narrowly or broadly they chose to interpret that theme. Each writer took a different approach. As a result, Flight 1 feels like a whirlwind tour of Hangover World, with each piece a different destination.

First, we have “Its Powerful Parking Lot,” a tight, subtly comedic flash piece from Sean Ennis that takes us to a casino suite after midnight. Then, we move to Matthew E. Henry’s poem, “it is not the stones/but the child’s mound” which drops us into the aftermath of ongoing natural disasters. Next, there’s Claudia Monpere’s poignant essay, “When I Knew Nothing,” bringing us to the classroom for the tempests and trials of her first year of teaching. We end Flight 1 with Rita Mookerjee’s hybrid piece, “Wherein the Kardashian Sisters Marvel at Their Bounty, Reach Enlightenment,” where we land in the world of reality TV.

So grab a nametag, pull up a stool, flag down a bartender, and get comfortable. These pieces go down smooth, and we promise the only hangover you’ll have is that you’ll still be thinking about them tomorrow. Welcome to Flight 1. We’re glad you’re here.