Note from the Editor

Abstract

Note from the Editor Laura Dassow Walls Fall is an exciting time in the life of an academic journal: fresh new essays come flooding over the transom; final touches are made to the last issue of the year, even as next year’s issues take shape; and, for ESQ in particular, the hard work of finishing the Year in Conferences gets underway: teams tighten up their conference reports, new teams make travel plans for MLA and beyond, ESQ’s editors go to work pulling together this sweeping, grand review of the very latest work in nineteenth-century American literature, just as it’s coming up over the horizon, long before it will find its way into print. This year YiC adds a new conference to the list, ASLE (the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment), and we hope ASLE will become a regular feature of YiC, deepening our involvement in the lively field of ecocriticism. Fall is the season of new beginnings elsewhere, too. Many of us are welcoming new graduate students to our campuses and new instructors to our faculties, even as we are writing letters of recommendation for graduate students venturing onto the job market, their professional futures in the balance. This past year I had the opportunity to meet two of our YiC graduate student teams, and, since ASLE was held in Moscow, Idaho—right next door to ESQ’s editorial offices—to meet as well the hard-working young professionals who put this journal together: Heloise Abtahi, Denise Stripes, and Marlowe Daly-Galeano. The infusion of energy from these ambitious and active young scholars and teachers, some in the earliest stages of their careers, was exhilarating. It was also sobering, in light of the challenges of the job market and of academic publishing. I am reminded of ESQ’s important role in nurturing the careers of the younger members of our profession, the ones through whom American literature will continue to thrive in the classroom and in publishing for a long time to come. With this issue I close out my year as Consulting Editor of ESQ, and hand off the reins, with gratitude, to our incoming permanent editor, Karen L. Kilcup, already hard at work and generating great plans for the future of ESQ. It’s been a deeply satisfying year in every way: at every level I see enormous energies, dedication far and beyond any paycheck, and conviction that a life in literature is the only life worth living. With that—Onward! There’s good reading ahead. ONLINE ACCESS ESQ is available online through Project MUSE. For subscriptions, visit http://muse.jhu.edu/about/subscriptions/index.html. [End Page 516] Copyright © 2015 Board of Regents of Washington State University