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Fresh
Pepper soup is a staple meal in Nigeria. Like the name goes, it is soup suffused with pepper—lots of it. The entire story around pepper soup is not about how tasty or filling it is but how viciously pleasing it is when it scalds your lips, tongue, and in some cases, throat. And the meal is, by necessity of preparation, expected to be eaten hot, straight from the fire—fresh—so as to savour every twinge and tinge of its peppery delight, and its tertiary accoutrements.
Here is where our editorial begins.
Our issues are bowls of pepper soup, and poetry is the pepper. This is important because for every issue we have rolled out since inception, this genre has bookended the magazine. This speaks more to the acceptance and rejection rate of TSTR where while a good number of poems may appear, fiction and nonfiction are almost always conservative, churned out in singles, or in some cases, not published at all. But there has never been a time when we did not have an accepted short story. And yet without poetry acceptances, no issue of the magazine can be greenlit. Interestingly, this issue, the 20th, rebranded as both a fresh start and an intentional continuity, includes the most accepted poems of any issue: nine.
Marinated
“I would never want to become so confident as to be complacent,” says Chika Unigwe, our interviewed writer and this issue headliner. Unigwe’s sentiments bleed and breed the ethos behind the success of our issues over the years. In her words lie the essence of tradition, of continuity, the necessity in the never-ending process of creative writing to birth something novel.
In truth, there are no new short stories, no new essays, no new poems, and indeed no new plays. What every poet, short story writer and dramatist does is chisel out a version of theirs from an endless pile. Like Babatunde Waliyullah Adesokan and Festus Obehi Destiny, Ivan de Monbrison joins the special breed of contributors appearing in multiple issues. In his delicate poem, “bits of flesh scattered,” Monbrison speaks about existence in a way where birth and death are not openings and closings but merely formality, a necessary process for living things. In Erere Onyeugbo’s “Vanilla Baby” love and loving run amok as an inexhaustible idea and thematic dough where other subject matters lift off of. Likewise, in Alobu Emmanuel’s “Alone” love and loving is simply seeking survival, hoping someone comes along to help in one’s time of need; service and care. Same unending discourse on love, different viewpoints.
Yo-yo
Nothing is more thrilling than reading and accepting submissions from writers who are not from your home country. In this issue, again, Nigerians are dominant, however punctuated by contributors from different nationalities. It makes for a balanced diet.
Our November issues always come with the fever and fervour that pervades the period—the winding down of the year, collation of memories, and the preparation for festivities. And this issue is no different even with the visible changes. While we move forward with a revised format, we are committed to sharing a literary dish that is bound by the same heart, care, and commitment we have shown for over four years.
Dear reader, welcome to a continuous beginning.
Chidiebube onye Okohia,
Lagos, Nigeria.
