As with the last issue, we asked contributors featured in this one to send us a few words about their favorite piece from it, preferably by a writer who is new to them. Here’s Johnsie Noel:
“Garrett Socol’s ‘Island Envy’ is a satirically riotous rollercoaster and dipping swell of narrative word play that is quite like finding a sock, missing from the laundry for months, wedged inside the crotch of the designer jeans you are wearing. Hilariously captivating from the onset. With Evan Cooper fishing for compliments and the rod handling Fanny Gurk, Socol ingeniously crafts two castaway caricatures and invites the reader to ‘write’ their misconceptions on the seemingly ignominious failings of this non-fat latte, mocha cappuccino swilling Cosmopolitan generation as they bandy about their illusory island. Socol’s writing rivets the reader to the page with unfettered language and dialogue that sticks and jabs like static cling. I have a true case of island envy after reading Garrett Socol’s work.”