Paul Vermeersch

from the editor: yours in print

Dear Reader,

It brings me great joy that you are now holding issue no. 7 of The Ampersand Review in your hands, that you can turn its pages, that you can read its poetry and its stories, its interviews and book reviews, for yourself. That it is in the world.
That it exists, in fact, in print.
Print!
While we can marvel at the many forms of reading that modern technology affords us, and more importantly, acknowledge that for many people these technologies have made reading more accessible and more hospitable than ever, I would like to take some time to write about my love and admiration for the medium of print. Certainly, print has its limitations. After all, an ebook or digital file can be accessed instantly from almost anywhere in world. You can’t say that about a yellowed mass-market paperback copy Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, or a dog-eared copy of Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red.
Still, for me, nothing surpasses the simple beauty of reading from the page. I love the tranquility of reading a physical book, the tactility of holding it my hands, feeling the weight of its paper, the quality of its cover stock. I love knowing, only from feeling the thickness of the pages against my thumb, without needing to look at the page numbers, how far I am into the book I’m reading and how much I have left to read. And I am one of those people who loves the smell of fresh glue in a brand-new book, and who feels nostalgic about the comfortable, musty odor of cheap paper in an old one.
More than a reader, I suppose I am a bibliophile, a lover of books, not only for the writing they contain, but also as objects—designed and crafted, printed and bound—books as works of art unto themselves.
And I love that when I am reading silently to myself from the pages of book, all of the voices in my head are my own. That is to say, the voices are not necessarily my voice, but they are all inventions of my own imagination. The speakers and narrators and characters all sound as I imagine them to sound. I treasure that intimate familiarity. As convenient and accessible as audiobooks are, whenever I listen to one, I find I must first overcome the mild, initial disappointment that the voices I hear belong to someone else. It always feels like an intrusion on my personal reading experience. To me, it’s somehow more akin to the public media of radio, podcasts, or theatre than the personal, private act of reading a book.
I love print, as well, for its archival properties. Printed matter will survive proprietary software updates, planned obsolescence, and bit-rot, and in doing so it connects at once with both tradition and posterity. And, not for nothing, it makes it exceptionally easy to lend a book you love to someone else and pass that love along.
These are only some of the reasons why we feel it is important to publish The Ampersand Review in print. We hope to always publish a magazine for people who love to read. Of course, we want to make it easy for you to find us online, as well, but when you’re heading out the door, just throw a copy of the latest issue of our magazine in your bag, and you can take us anywhere. In return, we promise to publish the kind of writing that can take you anywhere, as well.

Yours in print,
Paul Vermeersch

October, 2024

Paul Vermeersch is the editor-in-chief of The Ampersand Review of Writing & Publishing