A few weeks ago, I was talking to someone in their early twenties about how real change comes very slowly. I mentioned a book I was reading, Nelson Mandela's autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, and the fight against apartheid. The young man answered "What is apartheid and who is Nelson Mandela?" I tried to quietly answer despite the screaming in my head and my instant loss of faith in the Canadian education system.
Rewind again to the Word on the Street book fair in Calgary. Beyond was hoping to put a booth in at one of these fairs but time, money, and volunteers were allotted elsewhere. The local university always has a great book table at Word on the Street and I spent a good deal of time reading the spines of books and rejoicing in a wonderfully thick but remarkably affordable Czeslaw Milosz: New and Collected Poems, a Cash by Johnny Cash, and a collection of C.S. Lewis.
Throughout my browsing, there was a loud and ongoing commentary by a small group of university students. They picked up books, announcing or deriding authors with their tone. Or they would simply hold up a book between thumb and forefinger and proclaim, "Oh, who would read this?" To emphasize their superior taste, they would punctuate their announcements with gunshot words like "machiavellian" and "literary worth" to make sure that the rest of us, the unenlightened souls of varying ages, were aware of our bad choices. A good walk spoiled.
I have been struggling this year with grant proposals and what category Beyond fits into. We are not "literary" enough to be a literary magazine and for some readers, this is not enough. I think that's fine. There are a lot of excellent magazines with a focus on the arts or literature. Some of these publications focus on specific forms - film, poetry, fiction, visual arts etc.
Many parts of Beyond are used as an introduction to different aspects of being human either through the arts or reflective writing or reprints. Reprinting a portion of a work in a different context (with Beyond's emphasis on the visual) allows people to revisit something they have already read or invites them to explore the life and work of someone that we may assume is widely known (ie Nelson Mandela). While I am a fan of underground or alternative work, what is "underground" to a reader is in relation to where she finds herself standing in the landscape.
Ani Difranco has released her first retrospective, 
