from the publisher

december 2, 2001     

Dear readers,

In this, our first feature in a series highlighting themes and contributors, On the Page celebrates its New York writers and poets, much of whose work appeared, appropriately enough, in our first issue, on outsiders and community. These poems, short stories, and essays offer a variety of style—on topics ranging from dates, sex, and longing, to cars, religion, and imaginary worlds made of sugar and plywood. Most of the writers weren't born in New York, most have held jobs in fields other than writing, and their stories reflect the capacity for reinvention and the combination of cynicism and optimism that make up the metropolis puzzle.

When I visited recently, someone told me that "New York City didn't disappear," and its healing and continued survival are crassly mirrored in the kitsch of "I NY more than ever" T-shirts hawked on street corners, and poignantly expressed in the memorials and flyers dotting the cityscape and in the hushed voices that describe where people were on September 11th.

If you have more suggestions for special issues, please feel free to drop us a note.

All the best,

nada