Editor's Notes

More than a year ago now, as I sat in my home office with a pile of unread manuscripts at my feet, I began reading a piece of memoir called "The Speed of Memory." And then I read it again. And again. Soon I was dialing the number of my coeditor, Dan Lehman. When I realized what I was doing, I hung up the phone. It was nearly midnight. Too late to call any civilized person. So I waited until morning.

The next day, Dan read the piece. He called me in a state of ebullience, the kind of ebullience perhaps known only to editors, the kind of ebullience that always makes us remember why we do what we do.

So without consulting our esteemed editorial board and fearing we had held the piece too long and that it might have been accepted elsewhere, I called its writer, Brad Younkin, the young man who would end up giving us at River Teeth so much, the young man who would end up taking a part of us along with him.

Brad was soft-spoken and respectful on the phone. He told me he wanted only River Teeth to have the piece. He thought we might like it. He said he thought it was our kind of piece.

Because Brad's memoir was about the highly sensitive subject of his mother's rape, I talked with him for awhile about whether he had thought through the possible consequences of publishing his piece. (What we love about literary nonfiction is that it is always—or always should be—about real people, which means that there is ever present a "character," a person, who lives beyond the page.)

Brad informed me that he had sat down with his mother and other members of his family after they had read "The Speed of Memory."

"My mom's OK with it," Brad said. "Everybody thinks it should be published."

So we published Brad's work, his first published piece of literary nonfiction. We were honored. He seemed pleased.

Months later, at the 2004 Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference in Chicago, I was participating in a panel about baseball and creative nonfiction. My contribution was to examine the similarities between baseball announcers and narrators of creative nonfiction. When my discussion came to its central point, that believability must be the absolute main characteristic of baseball announcers and nonfiction narrators alike, I read sections of Brad's memoir as an example of a nonfiction narrator I would follow anywhere. Because I believed him. Because I believed in him.

After I sat back down, one of my panel mates passed me a note.

"Did you hear what happened to Brad?" the note read.

I shook my head. He passed me another note.

"We'll talk after."

Although I admit a weakness for believing the worst in situations like this, I still had enough adrenaline or goodwill coursing through me to keep the unthinkable at bay.

Immediately after the panel, I learned that Brad had been killed in a car accident in the fall of 2003, just a few months after he saw his piece in River Teeth.

News of Brad's death hung over the remainder of the conference.

It hovers still.

But so does his life. So does his talent.

River Teeth was notified recently by Bill Henderson that the journal had won its first Pushcart Prize. I ripped open the letter and read with wonder, awe, regret, and gratitude, that Brad Younkin had won himself, and us, this prestigious prize with his first published piece of nonfiction. Brad's piece will appear in the upcoming edition of the Pushcart Prize anthology.

This talented young man would have no doubt gone on to an amazing career as a writer.

We at River Teeth will not forget Brad. Not ever. Nor, I believe, will anybody else who reads "The Speed of Memory."

This issue is dedicated to the life and work of Brad...