Mostly, I will be the first eyes on submissions and the last eyes on each issue. I think being Managing Editor will require some of my most fastidious/tedious attention. However, if I’m paying attention with my whole heart, there’s just a couple of things I want to note. A few months ago a poem of mine appeared in carte blanche and a little after that I got to interview Kaveh Akbar for the blog and now I get to join the Masthead. These feel like steps toward some kind of literary career and for me it is enough to say I am pleased and mean it. But with that closer attention I see I’ve been lifted by peers and mentors onto a platform, even if it seems little to me. Last week I read, bookmarked, and underlined A. Light Zachary’s essay “for New Gatekeepers” (in Arc) and want to remember at every step that “when one operates under the assumption that what they do doesn’t matter in any big picture, one becomes more forgiving of their own mistakes, less likely to avoid repeating the same ones that made this all feel so stale in the first place.” Forgive the very earnest introduction, but I’m really happy to be joining a group of people who I think believe that what they do matters in our big and little pictures.