When the first issue of The Champagne Room was published, in June of 2019, we threw a party. Two parties, in fact, in the form of readings put on at two independent bookshops, in Athens, GA and in Columbia, MO: Avid and Yellow Dog, respectively. People listened to pieces, asked questions, bought copies; there was champagne. The debut of the journal was exciting, but the experience felt limited: I had no clear vision of continuation, of how and when and where this project was going to go. There were these stunning, wrecking, tender, defiant pieces, these pages featuring writers I wanted everyone to read. There was a journal—now what? In some ways, the release of Issue 01 felt at its core like an ending. Issue 01 stood alone for a long time as the only available issue of The Champagne Room—that was it, that was the journal I’d wanted to and worked hard to make in a whirlwind of six months of Sunday night meetings and endless emails and question marks. In many ways, Issue 01 as an entity still feels very precious. I think about the work within its pages often; I remember lines from the poems and essays and stories I read so many times, to edit, and then to share. It was, behind the scenes, a classic first pancake: we did not know what we were doing, but we went for it anyway (the only difference was that instead of throwing it out, we were selling it). Those writers, though—those writers featured in Issue 01 were ready. They knew what they were doing, they’d already done it, and damn, do they deserve to be read. (You can read them, by the way! They are here.) And now these writers have company. We are thrilled to announce that Issue 02 of The Champagne Room is now available for pre-order. (Its cover art, by Tess Montgomery, is featured above.) The production of this issue has been both exhausting and exhilarating, and the release of the journal this time around feels nothing like an ending: all we are thinking about behind the scenes is everything else we want to do. We want to continue devoting ourselves to the creation of a literary community, finding new ways to connect and share and grow. We will continue using these newsletters as a space to provide updates on all that is new and exciting—we are already looking forward to some additional offerings this summer. Later this month, we will be featuring a conversation with poet Christopher Randall on our website. Christopher is the author of “Salt with Savory Debris like Lavender Leaves,” “I Wanna Know What is Next and Want it to be Good,” and “Tandem Talks” in Issue 01, and we were fortunate enough to share space with him at our launch party in Columbia in 2019, where he read his words to a room crowded with people and books. Christopher also has a poem forthcoming in Issue 02, which can be in your hands in June. Our conversation with Christopher will be available on Sunday, May 15th. Love and Light, Heather (she/her) Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief, The Champagne Room
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