Letter from the Editor, Volume 18

Abstract

Hi, Atwoodians!

Earlier this month, Heather Cox Richardson[1] drew my attention to a proposed Republican resolution on women’s health care that includes this gem: “Whereas health care for women should also address the needs of men, families, and communities as they relate to women’s health care..."

That was before Trump took office again. As I write this, US public health agencies can’t publish “external communication,” despite the threat from the bird flu, the White House has removed webpages about accessibility, reproductive rights, gun violence, and the constitution, among others, and the first woman to lead one of our armed services has been abruptly fired.

When Atwood was asked a couple of years ago about the current backlash against progress, she said: “Am I worried? Yes. Do I have faith that knowing what atrocities are being proposed will stop them from happening? Some faith, but it will take more than faith.”

We need more than faith.

Despite this last year being what it was, a bunch of wonderful people wrote some great pieces, and I’m thrilled to have you read them.

One of our contributors, Maya Hollander, asked if she could practice her typesetting skills by helping me with this volume, and she’s done a wonderful job!

This collaboration has asked us both to consider what's best for you, the reader. To that end, we have decided to stay with the unconventional practice of not fully justifying the text; justified text can be very difficult for some readers to parse, especially those using reading assistive technologies.

In terms of the regular editing work, I have decided to add a new section, “Nonacademic Books & Miscellany,” for the few sources about Atwood that aren’t news and aren’t technically academic (academic authors writing for a lay audience, for example). I've also excluded several entries from predatory journals. While articles appearing in them are academic (written by and for scholars), they are unreliable, due to the journals’ lies about doing peer review. One article, for example, spelled a word familiar to all of us (handmaids) as "handmades" all the way through, including in the title. I dare say per review would have caught that. As these journals propagate and as some scholars will likely start producing articles using AI, it’s vital to privilege good research here. (I actually have co-authored a textbook about this: Who’s Your Source? A Writer's Guide to Effectively Evaluating and Ethically Using Sources, so this is important to me.) If you want to see the excised articles, search for Atwood articles from 2023 from the following journals: Norwegian Journal of Development of International Science; Academic Journal of Philology; Journal of Language and Linguistics in Society; International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences; International Journal for Research in Applied Science and Engineering Technology; International Journal of Recent Advances in Multidisciplinary Topics; International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research; International Journal for Multidisciplinary Research; International Journal of Advanced Research in Science, Communication and Technology; International Journal of Advance [sic] and Applied Research.

I am incredibly thankful for all of Chelsea Humphries’s work on this and past volumes, and I’m excited to collaborate with Christena McKillop on the next volume.

Finally, I'm so happy with Lara Meintjes’s beautiful cover, especially as we ended up with two essays on The Edible Woman!

Blessed be the fruit,

• Karma Waltonen, Editor-in-Chief

[1] Atwood also reads her newsletter, “Letters from an American”