By now, there are probably many of you who gave up hope that we would ever publish another issue. I've felt that way quite a bit over the last year or so, too. With law school taking up so much of my time (in addition to the rest of my so-called "life"), I came this close to canning Kudzu for good. I'm glad I didn't. Over Christmas break this year, I decided it was time to fish or cut bait. This issue is the results of that fishing trip, and it was quite a haul.

First of all, we have a new staff. I'm here as always, and I'm going to take it easy for a while. I'll oversee the general running of the magazine and do most of the design work, but I'm turning over the management of submissions to Thomas Rice, who comes aboard as our new Managing Editor. Assisting Tom will be John Moore, who has helped me some before and has appeared in Kudzu (the very first issue) as well. Tom and John's work will help keep Kudzu coming and on a reasonably regular quarterly schedule.

Second, I've totally redesigned the Kudzu site. It should now be (1) easier to navigate and (b) more attractive to look at. There's been some large-scale reorganization. Instead of having past issues archived as issue units, when a new issue hits the net, the previous pieces will be archived by genre in the Library section. That should make returning to a favorite piece easier, as you wont have to remember which issue in which it appeared, only the author's name or the title. New pieces will appear in the Current Issue section.

A new feature of Kudzu, long considered and finally coming to fruition in the next issue, will be the addition of long format review essays, primarily of fiction, but we contemplate non-fiction (and perhaps poetry as well) in the future. The first ones will be written by Tom, who will continue to write one for each issue. These reviews will cover more than one work, sometimes by the same author sometimes by separate authors. I hope to write some reviews as well, but with my finishing law school and taking the bar exam in at least one state (Arkansas) and probably another (Missouri) within the year, AND starting my practice, I probably won't have a whole lot more time to devote to Kudzu than I have now (probably less). But, with Tom and Johnny on staff, Kudzu will be around for a while longer.

As always, we welcome email and comment at <kudzu@etext.org>.

It's good to be back.