Kudzu: a digital quarterly was born in the Fall of 1994 in Oxford, Mississippi. Founded by myself (Steven Jarvis) and James E. Martin, Kudzu was originally planned to be a print literary journal, but lack of funds and an interest in the infant electronic publishing world led us to launch Kudzu electronically.

After exploring several alternatives, I decided to publish Kudzu in two formats simultaneously: in HTML via the WWW and in Adobe's then-new Acrobat PDF format. Publishing in those two formats allowed readers to either read issues online, or download them to read and/or print at their leisure. Over the years, the PDF version dropped out. Though I still believe in the technology (PDF is pretty slick), it took too much time to develop two versions. We plan to revive an original idea for an annual "Best of" edition in PDF, selecting the best work from that year. Look for the first one this fall.

Unfortunately, Kudzu subtitle (a digital quarterly) has not always been completely accurate. We got four issues out the first year (1995), but only three the next, and one in 1997. My personal and professional lives have conspired to leave me with little free time to devote to Kudzu over the last year. However, I've finally decided to get Kudzu back in gear, and hopefully my new partners will enable me to get issues out on something resembling a regular basis.

New to Kudzu is Thomas Rice. Tom's been a friend for a long time (right about ten years now), but it wasn't until this year that he joined the Kudzu staff. Tom will be taking over some of the day-to-day operations of Kudzu as well as coordinating the evaluation of submissions. Also back with us is John Moore. Johnny will be reading submissions and lending general assistance in the running of the magazine.

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.

So far, it's been an interesting journey, please join us for the next leg of the trip.


Steven Jarvis
publisher and editor-in-chief