From the Interim Senior Editor

By the time you read this, Prairie Schooner will have a new editor in chief, Kwame Dawes, who joins the university as Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner and Chancellor's Professor of English. He brings to Prairie Schooner a remarkable diversity of experience as a poet, novelist, playwright, and critic: his fifteen acclaimed collections of poetry, two novels, fifteen produced plays, and numerous critical works have received many major awards, and his critical study, Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius, remains the definitive statement about the musician's work and testifies to the strongly interdisciplinary nature of all his work. Dawes's work goes well beyond the printed page. He is an actor, broadcaster, theatre producer, and winner of a 2009 Emmy Award for his multimedia documentary project on HIV/AIDS in Jamaica. Before coming to the University of Nebraska he founded and served as executive director of the University of South Carolina Arts Institute, and he continues as programming director of the Calabash International Literary Festival, held annually in Jamaica.

To his new position as editor in chief, Dawes brings a wealth of experience and visibility in the international literary scene and an infectious passion for all the arts in the contemporary world that they both reflect and help to shape. We welcome him warmly and enthusiastically, and wish him well in his new duties as he guides Prairie Schooner forward toward its centennial. The magazine is in good hands. We encourage all our friends, colleagues, and readers to join us in welcoming Kwame Dawes, and we invite each and all of you to follow the new initiatives—print, digital, and otherwise —that will carry Prairie Schooner into the new and exciting future under his direction.