Editors' Note--SPROING!

The sound you are hearing is both the sound of spring having sprung and our magazine massively expanding. We at The Toucan are excited about both. And what’s not to love about Spring? Flowers, sunshine, Earth Day, toucan mating season—we did notice this issue has at times verged towards the randy. But since the pieces were well-written, we’ll blame it on spring fever. Although this pretty much guarantees that our submissions pile will be even stranger from now on…

But seriously folks, we’ve appreciated the warm response we got when we posted ourselves on Duotrope. If you haven’t heard of it, you should. It’s a website great for both writers and editors—we put out the call for submissions, you respond with your pieces. And so we grow, like the flowers in the spring, la de da, we love flowers…sorry about that.

Since we last published, we’ve stuck our beaks out. We’re now distributed at two more stores in the Chicago area, the ShopColumbia store and Women And Children First. We also were at the Chicago Zine Fest with our T-shirts and talking mascot and had a blast. And we flew into the 21st century and got a Facebook page, which can be a bit ponderous to update when you have a beak as long as ours, but we manage. No matter how you’ve come to us, we want to welcome you. Thanks for fitting this bird into your life, and the best part about us is that we come with our own newspaper of sorts.

Gosh, what do we say about the so-called waste disposal system? Well, first, that we certainly don’t think it should be used for waste disposal. We’ve doubled the amount of fiction with everything from deepening friendship to a satirical take on game shows to two quietly springlike prose pieces, to…well, you just go ahead and read it, OK? The poems run a similar gamut, from the flirty “iCrush/Crash” to the reflective “Galaxies” and “Listening To The Rain”. Tom Besson tops off the issue with a cover he made just for us—and we also love our new logo. We’ll miss the monocle, but never fear, we still, like Floyd, have a cigar.

So, have you sprained your wrist yet? Got a paper cut flipping through all the extra pages? Remember, you could be in those pages if you only submit! Our Summer Issue (yeah, that’s a new thing too) is nearly full, we have no more room for prose, but poets can still squeeze in there. After reading the guidelines at www.thetoucanonline.blogspot.com, send your stuff along to thetoucanmag@gmail.com, where the editrices make eager readers. In the meantime, Toucan fans old and new, happy spring! Stay inside when there’s lightning, and don’t trample too many flowerbeds.

The bloomin’ Editrices,

Liz and Laura