A Note to Our Normal Readers

A Note to our Normal Readers from the Founding Editors of The Normal School

Sophie Beck, Steven Church, and Matt Roberts

 Dear Normal Readers,

 We’re sad to announce that The Normal School’s Spring 2019 issue will be the last print issue of the magazine. We will, however, continue to publish outstanding fiction, poetry, nonfiction and multi-media work in our online magazine (www.thenormalschool.com). We’ll also be working with Outpost19 on our book series, The Normal School Nonfiction Series, and on other projects tied to the mission of the magazine. Sharkbear lives on!

Though we are sad to say goodbye to the print magazine, we are proud of what we’ve accomplished in eleven years of publication and excited for the future of our dynamic, multi-media web-based publication that will maintain our commitment to core values of innovation, inclusivity, quality, and literary citizenship. This difficult decision was made in consideration of both the rising costs and logistical challenges of producing a bi-annual print magazine as well as of the personal and professional goals of the Founding Editors. The magazine could not have existed without the visionary support of Fresno State, the hard work and dedication of our incredible students in the MFA Program in Creative Writing, and the original work from our contributors. Thank you for an incredible run! We hope you’ll stay “Normal” and keep reading the magazine at www.thenormalschool.com. We’ll re-launch the magazine as online only in Fall, 2019. Stay tuned! We may have a few surprises up our sleeves.

 Special Note to our Subscribers: We’ll be in touch soon with some options for those of you have subscriptions that extend beyond our final issue. We hope we can find satisfactory ways to honor the commitment you made to us with your subscription. Additionally, we plan to create a revamped online archive of past print issues that we hope to launch in Fall 2019; and the goal is for this to help keep the print versions alive and accessible.

 And a note to our Print Contributors: We’ll open up for a special shortened submission period on Jan. 15 that will run to March 15. The final issue will be released in May/June 2019 and coincide with the release of the first title from The Normal School Nonfiction Series, Once More to the Ghetto: and Other Essays by Jerald Walker.

Also, we are, as of today, currently OPEN FOR SUBMISSIONS for our final print issue, our online magazine, and The Normal School Nonfiction Series from Outpost19. Submit here:

https://normalschool.submittable.com/submit

Thank you for your support over these last 11 years!

Sincerely,

Sophie, Steven, and Matt