Welcome to Mistake House, a publication of Principia College’s English Department and a home for diverse student voices, with special features devoted to the work of professional writers and artists. Our 2015 premiere issue was met with positive reception and reader engagement, and the editors are grateful for the continuing support of our readership. For the last four months, we have been busily preparing the second installment of our “Buddhist catnap,” considering many generous submissions and assembling a diverse selection of poetry and fiction. As Bernard Maybeck, the architect of the original Mistake House, insisted, “monotony is a sin.” True to our namesake, readers and submitters can expect to find in the eclectic pages of Mistake House solid craft combined with eccentricity, freshness, and experimentation.
Named for a series of assemblages by modernist sculptor Joseph Cornell, our professional section, Soap Bubble Set, will once again showcase one visual artist and one writer. For this issue, our Editors are excited to highlight Alabama-based artist Amy Pleasant and South Carolina-based author A. D. Carson. Along with featured work from Pleasant and Carson, we are sure you’ll enjoy exclusive Mistake House interviews with them, where readers are offered insights into their creative processes.
Benjamin Franklin quipped, “A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.” Our selection of poetry and short stories are the food and fire constituting our banquet and hearth, the creative and intellectual hospitality we extend to our readers. Once again, we invite you into the house, to hang up your jacket, and pull up a chair. Welcome to Mistake House.
Brandon O’Neil, Editor-in-Chief