Theme The theme for the Spring 2014 issue is catalyst. : a substance that causes a chemical reaction to happen more quickly : a person or event that quickly causes change or action
The task for our very first meeting in the fall semester was to choose a theme for the issue. We shared and debated for hours—but as soon as “catalyst” was on the table, the discussion stopped. We knew we’d found our word. We’re happy to have received so many submissions that fit with this idea.
The Kiln Experience Kiln has been publishing fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and visual art for years, but we’ve never done anything like The Kiln Experience.
We set out to create a digestible version of the whole issue, composed of excerpts from each accepted piece, to be arranged in some coherent order.
Over the course of about six (very enjoyable but exhausting) hours, the staff combed through each accepted work of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and visual art. At first, we weren’t quite sure what we were looking for. But then we decided to use our four pieces of visual art as guiding images, and The Kiln Experience began to take shape.
We found beautifully written lines that we wanted to place somewhere special. We found images curiously shared across several works (the sky, a staircase, a river, and so on). And perhaps best of all, we started to find real themes—paragraphs, sentences, even short phrases that seemed to have the same resonance, like strings with the same frequency.
We began to weave.
What emerged from our collaboration is so much more than an arrangement of excerpts—it’s a journey through the heart of the Spring 2014 issue. We hope you enjoy it.