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Five years ago when I took over Irreantum‘s editorship, I had a sudden impulse to get an issue out before the end of the year. And I decided to go Halloween (why not?). I spent hours and hours as the only person on an abandoned high-school campus making the largest and best and most thrilling issue I could. Fearreantum debuted just in time for Halloween 2020.
Fearreantum was such fun I’ve flirted with doing another every year since but the time never felt right until now at the five-year mark. I don’t know to the day how long our founding editor Christopher Bigelow served, but it was five years, give or take, which means if I am not today I soon will be the longest-standing editor of Irreantum. I don’t say this to boast (although maybe?) but because it raises important questions such as how long should I stay here? I don’t see myself as a Wallace Shawn sticking around thirty years. I think that fresh editorial takes are important (which is why, in my tenure, issues have been guest edited by Natalie Brown, Kevin Klein, Michael R. Collings, Liz Busby & William Morris, Chanel Earl & Dallin Hunt & Heather Harris-Bergevin, and Katherine Cowley—not to mention the work by translations editors Gabriel González Núñez and Renan Silva) and no editor should reign forever. Besides, it’s a real job, running Irreantum, and at times I get tired. You may have noticed the first half of 2025 only had one issue (the second half will have four!).
This is not be announcing retirement, but I am recognizing it’ll happen someday.
In the meantime, five years have indeed passed. And with their passing arises Fearreantum II. Enjoy.
And as time continues to pass, propose an issue you’d like to edit yourself, keep those submissions coming, join us on Patreon, and tell all your friends. All of the. Don’t leave anyone else.
“Irreantum” does mean many waters, after all.