Tom Driscoll, Managing editor A Quick Note

Tom Driscoll, Managing editor

A Quick Note

olk Opera last dropped a new issue two years ago in late summer, the Special Covid-19 2020

Fedition. Like many people, I spent 2020-21 socially isolated, much of it in St. Mary’s Hospital at Mayo Clinic. Last year, a nasty infection inside a cardiac device implanted to keep me alive after a bad heart attack in 2016 almost put me down for keeps. Through the generosity of an anonymous organ donor, I received a heart transplant at the end of October 2021. Nine months transplanted now, the worst of the anti-rejection medication side-effects behind me, I’m feeling better than I have in years. Still, I’m digging myself out of the hole that long hospitalizations, the infection, a couple of operations, and drug side-effects dropped me in. I’m climbing up to the surface through book and magazine submissions, books in progress, acquisitions, editing and design projects. Oh—and accounting.

Pretty good excuse I suppose for being so far behind on Shipwreckt priorities. Folk Opera has remained on top of the to-do list since I first laid out a draft galley in December ’21. Even in my recovery fog, I believed this magazine is a valuable resource, a place for emerging and established writers to mingle. I apologize to all the contributors to this issue for having predicted a dozen different release dates. I know how frustrating constant delays can be. On the other hand, thanks to tremendous contributors, Lost Lake Folk Opera n7 is out of the gate. Thank you all for your support and patience. This issue provides a sampling of some great essayists, playwrights, poets, and writers of short fiction.

It’s important for Folk Opera to continue. The mag has grown through eleven issues over ten years to become a unique literary magazine where good journalism and honest, civil opinion ranks in stature alongside great fiction, poetry, and plays.

This issue spotlights a group of talented writers from Northfield, Minnesota, where, with the help of Northfield Poet Laureate, Rob Hardy, a regional literary renaissance has been taking place. Rob’s dedication to promoting the literary arts in schools, among adult writers and readers, in bookstores, restaurants, bars, public spaces, videos, and on social media is worthy of note.

Illiberal Democracy, the focus of this special issue, is hard to stick a fork into; it’s slippery. Many of the author, playwright and poet contributors explore facets of Democracy’s dark fish from different optics. I write this after watching another January 6, 2021, House Committee hearing. My friends, there is at once so much to digest, and yet practically nothing left to chew on. Must be time to get some exercise after the many months-old cold chowder we’ve been fed. Get up. Stand up. Act like Democracy depends on you.

Winona July 2022