Letter from the Editor Dora Malech, Editor in Chief Welcome to The Hopkins Review 15.2, the second issue of our 15th anniversary volume. In its pages, you’ll find a literary cornucopia of poetry, fiction, translations, essays, and reviews. You’ll also encounter two significant tributes to creative titans—one of visual art, the other of literature. The first is curator and critic Karen Wilkin’s remembrance of “national treasure” Wayne Thiebaud, who died last year on December 25 at the age of 101. Wilkin’s “In Memoriam” piece serves as introduction to a folio of his paintings from both the 20th and 21st centuries. Her curation deepens Thiebaud’s familiar legacy, beginning with Pie Rows, a representative “celebration of vernacular American foodstuffs,” before moving into figure paintings and landscapes equally arresting, if perhaps less familiar to the casual admirer of Thiebaud’s work. The issue concludes with its second tribute, a folio of essays, written mostly by former students, in honor of iconic postmodern fiction writer John Barth, who celebrated his 92nd birthday in May. This August, Dalkey Archive Press will bring out a new edition of The Sot-Weed Factor, that “modern classic” first published in 1960 and celebrated in Time as Barth’s “most distinguished masterpiece.” postscripts: Just Desserts, a collection of Barth’s unpublished late writings, is forthcoming from Dalkey Archive Press as well, and we’re honored to feature a piece from that collection here. As such, the folio dedicated to Barth’s influence begins with an account of Barth’s own influences. Barth was among the Writing Seminars’ first graduates, earning his BA in 1951 and his MA in 1952, and he returned in 1973 to teach for 22 years. I am especially thrilled to publish his work in thr, as his first published short story, “Lilith and the Lion,” appeared in the pages of this journal’s first incarnation (in the Fall 1950 issue of The Hopkins Review) when he was still an undergraduate. His work also appeared 58 years later in the first volume of John T. Irwin’s thr “New Series” relaunch in 2008. This is to say, Barth’s history is intertwined with our institutional and editorial history, and we hope that Writing Seminars graduates—and anyone else with an interest in mentorship and great writing—will savor this issue’s concluding folio in honor of the inimitable Professor Emeritus John Barth. [End Page 1] As Elliott Coleman Professor Jean McGarry writes in her essay “Cher Maître: John Barth, an Introduction” (thr 9.3, Summer 2016), “[He] conducted the writers’ workshop, as he did everything at Johns Hopkins and, most likely, in all departments of his life, with method, precision, and elegance.” I end with McGarry’s words because her admiration for Barth is consonant with my admiration for her upon her own retirement from the Writing Seminars after 35 years. As Professor Brad Leithauser and Krieger-Eisenhower Professor Mary Jo Salter are also retiring, one might call it the end of an era—and so it is, in the classroom and at the faculty meeting. But in art, this is just the turning of a page, as the creative conversations sparked in and by their work continue. We here at thr hope you find the spirit of both lively chat and thoughtful colloquy thriving in the following pages as well. Love from Baltimore, [End Page 2] Dora Malech, Editor in Chief The Hopkins Review Copyright © 2022 Dora Malech