Diary of a Mad Editor

News arrived earlier this week that yet another print literary journal is packing it in. Free Lunch is calling it quits after two decades and 42 issues. The message which states simply:

The Board of Directors of Free Lunch Arts Alliance regrets to inform you that Number 42 of Free Lunch will be its final issue. Ron Offen, the editor and founder of Free Lunch, has health issues that prevent him from continuing the magazine.

came as a bit of a shock. One gets used to a literary magazine that has been around that long. Apparently the situation is grave as Mr. Offen suffered a stroke due to a brain lesion from what I hear. I wish him well for, even though we had differing opinions on occasion, I always respected his editing chops and the loss of a good literary editor always leaves a hole that can never easily be filled — and there’s so few literary editors nowadays who know fuck-all what they are doing.

Just as the death of poet and literary ezine pioneer, Michael McNeilley, nearly a decade ago prefaced an explosion of new ezines, I predict that Ron Offen’s forced retirement will preface a further decline in print-only literary publishing. Mr. Offen, in addition to his gifts as editor and poet, was also a poster-boy of sorts for the pre-digital publishing era. There’s simply not very many old-school editors of his generation and caliber left to carry the banner for print-only literary publications. Literary editors of my generation and younger abandoned print-only publishing years ago. People like me just saw the writing on the wall, while the generation behind me was born into the digital revolution and don’t know anything else. I think it’s safe to say that you’d have to be a fool to launch a literary magazine in print-only medium nowadays. Still, it doesn’t stop me from feeling a bit sad at the prospect of losing yet another good print journal. It’s a shame we can’t buy cheap term life insurance for small press literary magazines. Anyway . . . Be well, Ron. Free Lunch will be missed.