William Stafford is no longer with us, but his poetry lives on here, “being contemporary” over and over again, continually evoking Stafford’s clear-eyed sense of the present moment, his “awake” stance to life and its unpredictability. In the thirty years since his words appeared, much has changed—Bellingham Review has grown, in both size and stature, but it has never lost sight of its essential mission: to publish “literature of palpable quality” from authors in the northwest, across the nation and, sometimes, around the world.

In the past thirty years, we have actively showcased the voices of both new and established writers, while introducing emerging writers to the mainstream literary community and major publishing houses. For example, Julia Glass, author of the celebrated novel Three Junes, first published one of her stories with the Bellingham Review. Eula Biss’s innovative essay “The Only Professional Player of the Toy Piano, Margaret Leng Tan,” won second place in our Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction; we published the essay, and it was reprinted in Harper’s Magazine, where it received a readership of many thousands. Several other pieces from Bellingham Review have been published in widely read venues such as Utne Reader and The Pushcart Prize Anthology (Best of the Small Presses).

Bellingham Review has also had an impact in communities other than the literary. For instance, in 2004 the winner of our 49th Parallel Poetry Award, Christopher Bursk, donated his entire $1000 prize money to the Bucks County Community College Foundation to fund a scholarship in the memory of his student and friend Raymond Reilly. Also, to the best of our knowledge, Bellingham Review is the only literary publication to have been part of a major league baseball broadcast. A poem by Yvonne Zipter, published in our Spring, 2005 edition, was read aloud during a Chicago Cubs game on WGN Radio 720’s “Voice of the Cubs” by Pat Hughes, during the play-by-play. Yvonne sent me a recording of this broadcast, and I often listen to it in my car on my way to and from work. It makes me smile every time—to know that poetry entered the world alongside the pop of the bat and the roar of the crowd.

To celebrate our thirtieth anniversary, Bellingham Review offers you this special double issue: chock full of the quality poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction you’ve come to expect from us. You will find writers we have published in the past and writers who are new to our pages. There is a lively interview with Portland essayist and editor Brian Doyle and gorgeous photography from Bellingham artist David Scherrer. You’ll also find a note from our founding editor Knute Skinner, who first conceived of this magazine thirty years ago and made it a reality, and a missive from former Editor-in-Chief Robin Hemley, who shaped the journal into the national literary presence it is today.

This issue also heralds a major development for the Review: with this edition we formally announce the Bellingham Review Endowment Fund. One thing that never changes for a literary journal is the need to raise money for operations, and while we have been successful in the past, our revenue is constantly in flux. Now is the time to create more stable channels of funding. The Bellingham Review Endowment, established by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Western Foundation, will eventually ensure the financial stability of the journal in perpetuity. The English Department at Western generously provided $10,000 seed money to begin the Endowment Fund, and this year we will begin our fundraising in earnest. For more information, see our ad in the back of this edition, or contact me in the English Department (360-650-3242) or Betty Krejci of The Western Foundation (360-650-2562).

We sincerely hope you enjoy this anniversary edition of the magazine, and we THANK YOU wholeheartedly for your support, your readership, and your friendship in the all the years past and in all the years to come.