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Letter from the Editor

Vallie Lynn Watson

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I was extraordinarily ill early last fall (with what turned out to be a fairly pedestrian bum gallbladder) and was in the hospital most of the semester, unable to teach, unable to make sense of words on a page or on a screen. I was scared I’d never be able to navigate stories again. I was scared I’d have to tell Taryn White that I couldn’t direct her MFA thesis, even after I was on the road to recovery.

When she dropped off a draft in November, I struggled with the first few pages. I was considering it like a freshman composition paper, and I didn’t know if my brain could handle much more. I put it away, and I opened the first book I’d looked at since June . . . and stayed up all night finishing it. And then another novel the next night, and the next, and the next. A crash course, a re-education in storytelling. I had to remember what made stories work and what made me build a life around them.

And then I got to spend the next four months, a pure indulgence, helping Taryn bring her novel,  A Place for the End, to life, perhaps the most satisfying project of my 23-year teaching career. A Place for the End unfolds in a series of extended vignettes and tells a story of family placement in a style I’ve never encountered. Our MFA director, Mike Horner, commented during Taryn’s thesis defense that, while there’s not one single character description, we know our narrator and her siblings as intimately as we know our own family. Taryn mastered this thrill through snapshots of time, moments that build breathlessly over decades, small pieces that capture an unimaginable fullness.

That Taryn’s final Boudin issue is all vignette is perfect. And it’s a perfect issue. The perfect issue.

I started teaching at McNeese and editing Boudin three years ago. Taryn White has been along for 100% of that ride: she rose from Assistant to Associate to Managing Editor of Boudin. She knows more about running the magazine than I do and kept it running during the fall semester when I couldn’t. I simply cannot fathom my world at McNeese without her in it, and I can’t say much more than that or I’ll start crying again. So, I’ll close with this snapshot: when she brought that thesis draft to me in November, my dog Raven immediately recognized the scent of his beloved dogsitter, and I had to rescue the front page, which proudly bares his teeth marks. Vignette a la Raven.

Taryn, your writing brought me back to life, and you’re just at the very start of a long career. Your words are about to imbue life into the whole world. 

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To learn more about submitting your work to Boudin or applying to McNeese State University’s Creative Writing MFA program, please visit Submissions for details.