cover image: Passing by Ajula Van Ness-Otunnu
A note from the editor:
Dear Reader,
Thank you for joining us in this celebration of the Spring 2024 Issue of Love & Squalor, and in celebrating all of the amazing artists and writers that have made it possible. Coming to the end of my undergraduate career, and thus the end of my time with Love & Squalor, I’m honestly having a hard time writing this letter; I can’t believe how fast the time went. How do I summarize my time here, with this magazine, in this small note? What I have loved most: how this magazine brings talented, hard-working artists and writers together under Love & Squalor’s sign post; how I have been given the gift of reading, admiring, and knowing the work of our artistic communities; how I have been able to witness the development and growth of our contributors as I have encountered their work again and again; how we have grown up together at Sarah Lawrence and out in the world.
To my editors, thank you dearly for all of your dedication, time, and exquisite minds this year; this publication wouldn’t get out the door without you, wouldn’t be what it is today without you. Thank you to our readers for joining us—in these pages, online, at our events— to witness the incredible work done within the Sarah Lawrence community and beyond. Finally, to our contributors, this magazine literally wouldn’t exist without your breath-taking, raw, and utterly human art and writing to populate its pages. Thank you for trusting us with your work. Thank you for bringing yourself to your art, for making that appointment with the creative self. Humanity needs that from you, and you offer it endlessly.
As an eighteen year old, I couldn’t have imagined the artistic community I would find in these last four years. Thank you, thank you to everyone in Love & Squalor and at SLC for your creative energy and generosity. In two weeks, I’ll be out in the world, only remembering what each of you have irreplaceably offered to me and to others, and I will forever be immensely grateful. Thank you. Keep it cookin’, my friends.
With love,
Jane