{"id":5845,"date":"2026-04-18T13:48:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T17:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/spire\/?p=5845"},"modified":"2026-04-21T23:01:36","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T03:01:36","slug":"editors-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/spire\/2026\/04\/18\/editors-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"A Letter from the Editors"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>By Chantelle Flores &amp; Harrison Goldspiel<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Welcome to <em>Spire<\/em>\u2019s tenth anniversary issue! Since our inaugural issue in 2017, we have been fortunate to publish a wide variety of environmental stories, including over 150 works of fine art, photography, poetry, essays, research articles, and even animation. We are grateful to the many talented contributors who have shared their pieces with us and the larger community in Maine, advancing awareness, dialogue, and action around conservation and sustainability. As our social-ecological systems face ever-growing challenges, we believe interdisciplinary forums such as <em>Spire<\/em> are vital for reflection, engagement, and (hopefully) inspiration. Thank you for being here and joining the conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We are delighted to announce Jordan Ramos as the winner of this year\u2019s cover art contest. Ramos\u2019 <em>Spiritual Retreat <\/em>is from her watercolor series, <em>Athletes of the Rake<\/em>, and sheds light on Maine\u2019s sustainable wild blueberry hand-raking communities. She vibrantly paints hand-rakers in action and shares their experiences through documented interviews, emphasizing the beauty found in community-engaged agricultural practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our tenth issue contains work from over 20 contributors, spanning a variety of environmental themes and genres. We see stories about glaciers, climate change, and our relationships to landscapes over the passage of time in Eleanore Allan-Rahill\u2019s poetry collection <em>Glacial Humanity<\/em> and Nestor Walter\u2019s essay \u201cConsider the Glacier.\u201d We hear how the rivers and mountains in our backyards move and reorient us to the natural world, in personal essays such as \u201cOur River\u201d by Andrea Lani and \u201cListening Differently\u201d by Mara Scallon. Writings in this issue meditate on our lasting and complex legacies in nature, whether in the form of artificial refuse, as seen in the poem \u201cOde on a Plastic Starbucks Cup\u201d by Benjamin Thorne, or as artificial life, as explored in the fictional piece \u201cAn Anatomy of a Steller\u2019s Sea Cow\u201d by Matthew Jablonski.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The artists in this issue reflect on the fragility and beauty of local species and environments in their watercolor paintings, prints, digital illustrations, and even sculpture. Human-nature interactions are on display for feathered friends, such as in the watercolor paintings of Piper Galipeau\u2019s <em>Tapping<\/em> and Brenda McGuiness\u2019s <em>Summer Residents<\/em>, as well as those with fins, such as in Sarina Martin\u2019s monoprint <em>Replenished<\/em> and Maeve Littlefield\u2019s linoprint <em>Blubber and Baleen<\/em>. Several pieces explore impacts of climate change and human excess on ecosystems from the sea, as seen in the sculpture <em>Entangled Rights<\/em> by Sophie Shannon and the print <em>Debris Pile #01 <\/em>by Erin Coughlin, to the sky, as conveyed in the digital illustration <em>Survival of the Tallest <\/em>by Haley Metzger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Of course, we must thank our dedicated editorial team who have made our tenth issue possible. A special thanks to our editors\u2014Laurel Dorr, Mo Drammeh, Elise Dunne, Joelle Kilchenmann, Nicole McAdam, Monica Miles, Kathryn Novak, Autumn Pozniak, Alex Scearce, Micah Shelenberger, Clinton Spaulding, Kathleen Spear, Stella Tay, Aaron Thibodeau, Jordan Thompson, Ana Trueba, Erin Victor, and Nestor Walters\u2014who provided their insight and time. This year we also thank our design team members, Kathryn Novak and Erin Victor, who made our inaugural print issue a success and our social media coordinator, Nicole McAdam, who helped spread the word about <em>Spire<\/em> online. Additional thanks is given to our faculty director, Daniel Dixon, whose support for <em>Spire <\/em>over the last decade has made this journal possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We enjoyed the chance to read and edit the powerful voices, narratives, and works within this issue. We hope you enjoy the tenth edition of <em>Spire<\/em>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cheers, <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Chantelle Flores &amp; Harrison Goldspiel<br>Editors-in-Chief<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Chantelle Flores &amp; Harrison Goldspiel \u00a0 Welcome to Spire\u2019s tenth anniversary issue! Since our inaugural issue in 2017, we have been fortunate to publish a wide variety of environmental stories, including over 150 works of fine art, photography, poetry, essays, research articles, and even animation. We are grateful to the many talented contributors who [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spire-2026-issue"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>A Letter from the Editors - The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability - 91爆料<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/spire\/2026\/04\/18\/editors-2026\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Letter from the Editors - The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability - 91爆料\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Chantelle Flores &amp; Harrison Goldspiel \u00a0 Welcome to Spire\u2019s tenth anniversary issue! 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