THE PILGRIM

From the Desk of the Editor:

There may be other publications out there as consistently raw and illuminated and polyphonic as The Pilgrim, but I’ve never read them. There maybe another roster of writers as inspired and exposed,and as free from the taints of fashion or ideology, as the writers who create this magazine, but I don’t know where it is. In the ten years since The Pilgrim was
founded, hundreds of writers have passed through its pages, and every single one of them has left his or her or their mark. It has been the privilege of my literary life to be their editor.
 

This issue, our fiftieth, features a special retrospective essay by Pilgrim regular Kevin Walker, and on the back page we revisit a legendary reflection from 2013, by Dave Reid. Amy Klee has redesigned the magazine: more air, more light, more space for electricity between the pieces. But our core is unchanged. These are dispatches from the frontiers of society and the frontiers of experience. Our master metaphor, since the beginning, has been pilgrimage: the outer condition of being unhoused, the inner condition of being bare to the heavens. No one knows more about it than the writers of The Pilgrim.

We welcome to our pages Brandon K. Fontanilla,
Bob Acedo, Debbie Cantrell, Geno P, Stephen Jerome,
Paul Rockwell, Jordan, ADB, Tenzin, Kristain Halmoral
and Walter Hernandez. We rejoice in the restoration
to health of Laurel Lee Lambert and the return—after
four and a half years—of Louis.

 

—James Parker