Dedication:
Jack Smith
The 2015 issue of the Green Hills Literary Lantern will be the last for Jack Smith, founding editor and long-time Fiction Editor and Co-Editor of the journal. Jack has decided he needs to devote more time to his own writing and other pursuits; the literally thousands of hours he has put into working with our literary journal for the last quarter century are testament to his devotion to literature and to his fellow writers.
Jack began the journal on a regional basis in the 1980’s; when he asked me to come on as poetry editor in 1994, it was with the intention of opening the journal up on a national and even international basis. He saw his vision for GHLL fully realized, as we have published an issue each year since, full of first-rate poets, fiction writers, essayists and reviewers from all over the U.S. and occasionally from outside our borders. After a great run as a print journal and now as an online publication here at Truman State, we have been open to writers twelve months a year for over twenty years. In his capacity as fiction editor especially, Jack has published hundreds of fiction writers, always without regard for their prior reputations or lack thereof, always seeking the finest fiction to fill our pages.
It has been a great pleasure and privilege to work with Jack all these years. Professor, editor, award winning fiction writer, he has been a model of what fairness and discernment mean in judging the work of others. We lose a lot in seeing him step down, but we’ll try our best to fulfill and continue his vision for Green Hills Literary Lantern.
Thanks, Jack, you have inspired and taught me in my own writing and editing. We’ll do our best here to maintain the high standards you set.
–Joe Benevento