Issue One
Winter 2025
The inaugural issue of Copytext: A Magazine for Revision includes poetry by Tina Barry, Angela Cummings, Brooks K. Eisenbise, Robbie Gamble, Kale Hensley, Lindsay Stuart Hill, Colette Love Hilliard, Neha M. Sampat, and Lesley Sharpe; fiction by Eric Roe and Danielle Shi; and visual art by Lisa Cox and Chad Glazener, whose painting graces our cover. Each piece includes a Final, Middle, and Early draft.
Read the Editor’s Note from our founding editor-in-chief Lauren Frey for an introduction to the issue.
We are delighted beyond words to present the inaugural issue of Copytext: A Magazine for Revision!
As we launched Copytext into the world this summer, our dream was to create a literary magazine that would not only house exceptional creative work but also serve as a personal, accessible archive of process. Issue One brings this dream to life.
As the full Editor’s Note describes, the thirteen writers and artists featured here have taken us on every kind of revision journey, inviting us to witness their final pieces alongside an Early and a Middle draft. We were truly blown away by the skill and vulnerability evinced by their work, and we trust that you will be as well.
Copytext is an invitation for you to read closely—to slow down, explore, and have fun seeing the variants, decisions and time represented by these revisions.
With excitement and gratitude,
The universe is a box we tiptoe through, a breathing box that holds its stars like pearls.
This painting began with a broad, spacious color field to support my emotional register of the text. From there I introduced text and symbols […]
Barclay didn’t say anything for a moment, the dream still rampant, as if playing out in this very room. It had been a room like this one […]
What if a kingdom came hard like candy? What if I were called in for a beating but not like you’d expect.
