We’re extremely proud to bring you yet another great issue of poetry, fiction, photography, graphic fiction, creative nonfiction, audio stories, and our carte blanche Q&A, as we come to the end of our eighth year of publishing.

Last year we introduced themes to carte blanche, with a spring issue on crisis and a fall issue on obsessions. This spring, we opened the call for submissions to anything and everything, to give our writers carte blanche, as it were.

The word obsessions often comes with negative connotations. It’s not healthy to have obsessions (think OCD, hoarders, or stalkers). But where would we be without them?

Moments of crisis – whether in the form of global disasters or more personal catastrophes – change our lives. Following a crisis, we question our values, change our habits, reflect on the past, and rethink the future. What better way to do this than through story? Stories are built around crises: events, big and small, that transform those who live through them, real or fictional, and challenge the way we see the world.