Morituri salutamus te.
We greet you at the end of a great run. Thirty-six years of GHLL (and, for me, 20 years with the journal).
It’s been a journey. Jack Smith, our founding editor (and contributor to this issue), writes:
“The Green Hills Literary Lantern, GHLL, began as the literary magazine of the North Central Missouri Writer’s Guild, under the editorship of Ken Reger and myself. We were a local magazine that published local authors. We soon expanded to a national magazine with a large number of submissions, country-wide, and later globally. Joe Benevento came on as poetry editor and several years later, GHLL moved its operation to Truman State University, under the management of Adam Davis. From a local journal it has grown and grown, expanding its reach to publish the best in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.”
Joe Benevento adds:
“I have been the poetry editor of the Green Hills Literary Lantern for over 35 years. It all started for me when Jack Smith, the founder and first editor of the journal, asked me to come on as poetry editor, as he decided to take GHLL from a regional to a national (and even international) literary journal. We were a print journal then and had a nice budget from North Central Missouri College. After they took away funding, Adam Davis and I were able to get Truman to fund the print journal for some years more, but then that funding also got taken away and somehow Adam has kept it up as an online journal, through his masterful work as managing editor as well as prose editor, especially after Jack Smith retired from the journal. Over these thirty-five years we have published well over a thousand different writers; many times I’ve had the pleasure of being the first publisher of a writer who has gone on to have a significant career. Thanks to all those writers and good fortune to you as you seek out other publishers. It’s been the proverbial labor of love; I’ve made no money from it ever, but a number of priceless, lifelong friends- other poets- some of whom I have never met in person. I hope GHLL will live on for some of you in your memories of a solid literary journal that always stood for quality writing, no matter whether from a noted writer or a first-timer or all the writers in-between. Accessible, honest, unpretentious poems that I have been proud always to promote through the journal.”
Me? When the journal moved to Truman, I was asked to oversee the business end of things. In those days, we had internal funding; grants were available – and needed: the physical book cost about $15000 to produce, with a slick full-color cover, and an average page count of about 300 pages. Jack and Joe handled submissions and communicating with authors. I had to oversee proof and subscriptions, pay vendors, etc. But the era of austerity was upon us, and when the funds disappeared, quite suddenly, we faced the stark choice of folding or going digital. Some of our stable of writers balked – entirely understandable. I know what an actual press thundering full throttle sounds like, and the smell of printer’s ink tugs at memory like certain perfumes. There is no replacement for holding that delicious object in your hand. But certain old friends saddled up at the new trailhead. And twenty years on, some of them appear in this very issue: Larry D. Thomas, Gary Fincke, Mark Belair … and among the many returning voices here, there may be others here who rode with us in those analog days; it’s hard to remember.
The digital domain had its advantages. Among those who stuck with us was Evelyn Somers, a longtime editor at the Missouri Review, whose novella appears here. Even Stephen King says he has trouble placing those things. A print journal cannot include a novella without squeezing out many other writers. We are happy indeed to be the place where this striking fiction can appear.
Additionally, the online journal was able to reach a much wider audience, and while we never abandoned our regional roots (check out the cover art by Kairlyn McConnell!), writing from outside North America, outside Europe, began to appear in the inbox, and so in the Table of Contents. This is also easily seen in the current number: Amita Basu, Theo Czaikowski, Tung-Wei Ko, and others.A few times, we published work in languages other than English (with author’s translations).
For a decade now I have supervised about a dozen interns per year, who first learn the history of what the larger publishing industry used to call “Literary and Little Magazines.” They acted as junior editors (though no submission failed to get a reading by Joe or myself). And it was a great teaching experience. Perhaps the hardest thing to get across to them is that there are standards, which are certainly not as objective and empirical as those that operate in the sciences (“is this reagent of standard purity and strength?”) but neither is it a mere matter of what one particular reader happens to like today. I had them read back issues, and develop descriptors for the kind of prose and poetry GHLL publishes, and when their answers started to sound like Joe Benevento’s – “accessible, honest, unpretentious,” I figured they were getting it. It can be hard to get across to intense and visionary young people like these, that a successful journal is not simply an expression of the editors’ commitments, let alone their personal tastes. I certainly have approved pieces that weren’t necessarily my personal faves, but they had virtues and strengths we value. Like Joe said. And I have declined things where I could see high merit, but they were primarily invested in things that are not priorities for us – edginess, polemic, extreme revelation. I would sometimes coach these writers toward more suitable venues.
That was rewarding – teaching and contact with bright young people is one thing I know I will miss in retirement. But all of this was uncompensated (not even included in my teaching load); none of us, not Jack or Joe or myself – ever made a nickel here; even in the days when we had funding, we never so much as charged a cup of coffee to the operation.That business model just won’t work going forward; we were happy to volunteer, but it’s understandably difficult to find people to carry on under the same terms.
Teaching was central to our mission, in the overt form just described, but also with writers themselves, especially young ones. If we sensed this was someone new to the field, that manuscript got extra attention, coaching on how to help it become its own best thing, and get published, even if it wasn’t going to be with us. It was always deeply rewarding to be the first publication for an emerging writer, and we are delighted to do so here, for Savannah Kluesner.
I think one of the things that made GHLL genuinely distinctive was its range of authors. Certainly the contents are dominated by people who identify primarily as writers, many of whom also teach writing and literature. But there was no issue where we didn’t have folks who ply very different trades, and who live – and tell us about – very different lives. People who had experiences few of us share. It’s one of the two main reasons to write, isn’t it? To make the strange familiar, or the familiar strange. Doctors – we had quite a lot of those, actually. Lawyers, military personnel, actors, models, at least two nuns, a petroleum engineer, a goat-rancher, police officers – and prisoners. A gripping account of in-prison mental health care – or rather, its total absence – was slated for this issue, but for sundry reasons, fell through. Making a space where the voices of imprisoned people could be heard was explicitly part of the mission, and we maintained a listing in several magazines for inmates.
We’re not sentimental; some of those people have done very bad things. Many years ago, we got a letter from a crime victim, asking how we could give a platform to someone so terrible. The reply was one of the harder things I’ve had to write – in sum, honoring the letter-writer’s legitimate anger, but also explaining that being a good person, or otherwise, has little to do with whether a person has a story to tell. Indeed, the person who has done something bad has an experience the person who has not done that bad thing … does not. Has something to talk about, maybe to work out, to understand, maybe to help others understand.
Making room for expression, understanding, exchange. Helping people find their voices, find their audiences. That was the mission.
We served. Pretty well, I want to think.
Nunc dimmitis.
Which is not quite Latin for “Happy Trails.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulgyEcfrBrs
ABD, Kirksville, July 4, 2025