What Didn't Exist Before You Made It

You have made radio telescopes and moonshots. You have made schools and sanctuaries, publishing houses and cottage industries. You have made businesses out of missions. You have made nine course meals on your back porch and walls that sing. You have made your sorrows into songs. You have made dream homes and lending libraries. You have made poems and essays and more books than we could possibly publish. And you have made this magazine. This issue is made by you and for you, a magazine composed almost entirely of work you submitted. It is a selection of the hundreds of contributions sent in response to the question: What didn’t exist before you made it? These responses are included in full and edited forms in a completely redesigned and expanded issue of Bennington. Everything from the way we organize the magazine to the way we present and collect your work has been reimagined. We have moved the magazine from being framed by themes to being framed by questions, from a publication that tells you stories to one that shares your stories. And even with an added 16 pages, there was still more to share than we had pages.

In this new approach, I have retired all magazine departments except two—National Reviews, where you’ll find excerpts of reviews that have run in major, national media outlets and a new Notes section. Where you once found two sections of notes—faculty notes and class notes— you will now find a more robust and reorganized series of notes pages. There are Art Notes, Book Notes, Performance Notes, Public Action Notes, Music Notes, Film & TV Notes, Personal Notes, EDU Notes and Local Notes. These sections, like this magazine, were built and shaped by your submissions; they are collections of what you send. If you do not see a section, make one. Send an update, a submission, a national review. While I hope you are excited by this new organization, you may still want to find your friends and former teachers quickly and easily. I have created an alumni and faculty index on pages 72 and 73 for just this reason. This magazine redesign is unlike most alumni magazine redesigns because aside from the National Reviews and Notes sections that will bookend upcoming issues, everything else is improvised, curated, and edited in response to what you submit. For this issue I have organized selected submissions into five features, three feature collections, as well as notes. Responses to the question that were complete, composed, and could be run almost entirely as they were submitted appear in the feature section. Other submissions that were editorially connected are presented in featured collections as captioned work or brief reflections. And other submissions best suited for the redesigned Notes or National Review section have been edited and included in those sections.

In Bennington style, this redesign began with a simple idea: To ask readers a question and to develop a magazine from those responses. That idea will continue and evolve. For the next issue, I invite you to answer the question: What did you once think impossible that you now believe is possible? I encourage you to review the submission guidelines, standards, and deadlines at bennington.edu/submissions before submitting your response.

I hope you enjoy this issue as much as I have enjoyed putting it together. Please share your opinion with us when we send a link to an online survey in the next few weeks. We want this magazine to be worth your time and attention. Let us know if it is. I look forward to hearing from you.