10. Harmattan Season

In the Pacific Northwest we have welcomed the spring. Hibernation has ended and each of us gallops to renew our buds. The slowly emerging sun itself quenches, soul-drenches. And yet, winter was just here. Frost, blankets of fresh fallen snow, steam off words spoken. Imagine, instead, a November through March not cold and wet but parched under a dry, fierce heat. That is what we asked of our community this Harmattan season: to take a barren theme and make more.

Our inaugural Winter Issue intro boldly stated that “[HamLit] could become something meaningful… an accessible space for all of these wonderful ideas to fully surface…” We were a tri-county journal then, paying too much for Submittable, learning to promote via the social medias, and feeling both wonder-struck and so nervous. We proclaimed No Man’s Land, in that first call of theme, and you answered with seven years of burgeoning, meaning-filled community. 

This denouement of our season series features eight drill-bent storytellers — in prose and poetic form. Again, our contributors brought to life an idea-spark centered on drought, loss and less, and gave us parched hearts, AI pollution, chapping patchouli. How we build machines to catch water, purify it, then beg it to stay. As if the water itself wasn’t always meant to go. A veld between hearts. Underwater dry spell. The weight of color. A newcomer dilemma. If art meets debt. Grass gone brown. The truth of home.

Thank you for these seasons, for each celestial solstice and equinox rendered work. Thank you for the wry, the dark, the hope, the hearth, the herald of experiences not yet explored. Thank you for making our dry well spring life.

With continued gratitude to past and present editors, designers, authors, and readers; the PNW would not have Issue 10, or HamLit, without your partnership.