(June 2, 2009) -- It's finally here.

And I know you've all been waiting a long time for what you'll find on this series of web-pages (and within the colorful pages of our PDF edition, which can be downloaded by right clicking the photo to your right and clicking "save as.") Yes, it's been a long time coming, and as such it's a whopper of an issue.

The PDF contains long-form fiction by our featured writer, Cetti Cherniak ("Waiting Room"), along with work by Geoffrey Craig ("Morocco") and Terrell Brown ("Incident at Devil's Hall") along with poetry from ten talented writers.

This website, meanwhile, contains the work of seventeen fiction writers, four non-fiction writers and the same ten poets featured in the PDF (along with some poems we didn't have room for in the 124 page PDF edition). You'll also find book reviews by Laurel Johnson, Brett Sanders, and Lynn Strongin, and music reviews by Michael Corrigan and myself. It's enough material for a double-issue, just in time for summer reading!

With the economy the way it is right now, the future of New Works Review is up in the air at this point. I intend to work through the summer to attempt to put up an archival system of past issues this fall, by September or October of 2009. Beyond that, we're in limbo. Brett Sanders has to step down as managing editor due to time constraints, while I, as editor-in-chief, must balance my editorial time with the task of finding full-time work to pay the bills.

That said, the magazine is not shutting down. But this will be our last issue for the near future, perhaps the only one of 2009. But I hope to have a way to provide more regular content in-between issues at a later date.

The most important thing is to savor the work within this expanded issue of NWR. I think you'll agree it's one of our strongest issues to date, and I'm proud to have been a part of it.

Jonathan Sanders
New Works Review's Editor-in-Chief

Featured Writer

Cetti Cherniak is an ordinary looking, middle-aged lady who lives in an average neighborhood, possibly next door to you or to some uncle or cousin of yours, with her teenage son and her darling schnauzer, who has one ear up and one ear down. She has been a mother, certified auto mechanic, homemaker, mystic, Sunday school teacher, wife, gardener, electronics technician, assistant midwife, grandmother, meditator, herbalist, optical technician, substitute primary and secondary school teacher, and disabled person, in that order. She has a B.A. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Indiana University, studied Theology on the graduate level at the University of Notre Dame, and is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at Seattle Pacific University. (Of SPU’s program she says, “It’s not a beach, but it’s a darned decent sandbox.”) She is the sister of the artist Larry Cherniak, whose painting of the Iraq War appeared in the Fall issue of New Works. Cetti received a New Writer Award in 2006 for her article “Napoleon Dynamite, Priesthood Skills, and the Eschatology of the Non-Rational” and both a New Writer Award and the Article of the Year Award in 2007 for “The Theology of Desire,” both published in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. She loves Jesus and blueberries and singing silly songs at full volume and smelling things. She also loves reader feedback, and hopes you will enjoy her essay and story. You may email Cetti at chernc@spu.edu.

Cetti Cherniak has chosen to submit an essay as featured writer, which can be read on her non-fiction page.