Welcome to the eighth issue of Waccamaw, an online literary journal published at Coastal Carolina University.

This issue was launched October 31, 2011. I wish to extend thanks to Joe Bueter and Hastings Hensel for their assistance in selecting the poetry for this issue, as well as to M. F. Fowler for the work he did assisting fiction editor Jason Ockert.

In this issue, we are pleased to offer the fourth in a series of features on contemporary authors with Jason Ockert’s “interview wheel” featuring brief interviews between Aimee Bender, Ben Percy, Kevin Wilson, Lauren Groff, Adam Levin, Stephanie Powell Watts, Kevin Moffett, Laura van den Berg, Will Allison, and Jeff Parker.

Our next period for accepting unsolicited submissions runs January 15 through February 28. Interested authors should consult our submission guidelines. Please note that we only accept submissions online via our Submission Manager.

We hope you will enjoy this issue and once again find the literary work we’re presenting to be as essential and mysterious as the water of the Waccamaw River that has flowed through Conway, South Carolina, home of Coastal Carolina University, since long before the area bore any of those names.