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

This issue was launched October 31, 2010: the 215th anniversary of John Keats’s birth. 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 Jason Bordt and M. W. Fowler for the work they did assisting fiction editor Jason Ockert. Thanks also to Caroline Cahill for her work as a summer intern for the journal.

In this issue, we are pleased to offer the second in a series of features on contemporary authors with Daniel Cross Turner’s interview of Natasha Trethewey and the publication of the transcript of Trethewey’s Distinguished Faculty Lecture at Emory University in February of 2010.

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.