Soliloquies Anthology, n° 30.2

This is the second issue of our 30th anniversary year, and it came together the way things often do during the school term: slowly, arduously, with too many tabs open and heads cluttered by images, ideas and phrases that kept returning in slightly different clothing. We read hundreds of submissions, but certain works resurfaced on loop like they had been delightfully mis-hung in the wrong closets. Those are the ones you’ll find here: not necessarily the loudest, but the ones that seem to have stuck. It feels necessary to name the people who made this possible. Our utterly cool-headed masthead carried the issue with a kind of attention that has become a precious resource. Gratitude goes out to our prose and poetry editors whose close reading uncovered parallel drafts beneath the firsts, the Managing Editor who weathered deadlines and submissions, our Social Media Manager and Graphic Designer who shaped the visual language and our Web Content team whose words (finally) appear in print on these pages, and who kept the journal moving online week after week. Nothing here was achieved solo. To have helped bring two issues into life during Soliloquies’ thirtieth year has been a real genuine pleasure and a crash-course in becoming. As I retire from my tenure as co-editor-in-chief, and of undergraduate studies, I reflect on what we built collectively, and on the vast choir of Canadian and visiting voices I got to hear here for the first time.

Foster Gareau, Co-Editor-in-Chief

I have infinite gratitude for the community of writers, both residing here in Montreal as well as the rest of Canada, who have placed their faith and trust into our project. This edition, we were blown away by the number of submissions that you sent to us, and I would like to extend my thanks to each one of you. Among the hundreds of works we received, only a handful can be found on the proceeding pages. However, regardless of if they made it to print, we genuinely cherished the opportunity to review each piece. This anthology could not have made it thirty years if it were not for each writer who entrusted us with their creative works each edition—a process which we certainly recognize to be vulnerable.

I must take the time to thank you: our reader. Your support for our project is so, so significant to us. I have infinite appreciation for your endorsement as we fulfill our mandate to promote diverse written voices from Montréal and Canada regardless of experience. We strive to continue to meet your expectations in future iterations of this anthology. I am so excited for you to read what we have put together.

While 30.1 considered the abstract, carrying us into the skies, the following works keep us grounded. These pages will invite you to reflect on our origins, our histories, and where we situate ourselves. We take this opportunity to reflect on finality, to reflect on how our pasts have altered us, whether for the better or worse. As my tenure as Co-Editor-In-Chief comes to a close, I cannot imagine a more fitting issue to have had the pleasure of compiling.

Micaela Day, Co-Editor-in-Chief