Word From the Editor

by Lise Quintana

We’ve just come through a contentious election, and regardless of your pick on election day, the election process asked people to examine their beliefs and make choices accordingly. Our lives are full of choices from the second we get up in the morning and have to decide what to wear until the minute we decide to turn off the light at the end of the day.

We can spend years of our lives dissecting, re-living, regretting or celebrating some decisions. We may make the same decisions over and over or come to be defined by some decisions – a UCLA alum, a struggling day trader, a heroin addict, an expatriate.

Jillian Lauren, writer, performer and subject of our featured interview, presents her life in her memoir Some Girls without any of the angsty, blame-ridden “what if” one might expect from a woman whose choices are the stuff of cautionary tales.

…we knew that on the one end are our authors whose hearts and souls went into the words you’ll read on Lunch Ticket, and on the other end are our readers who deserve to have their horizons broadened and their minds expanded.

Diana Woods, author of our featured essay, similarly skipped the self-recriminations as she relates her life with cancer. At the end of life, many people look back and regret choices made or not made, actions taken or not taken, but Woods managed to look back with less regret and more compassion for herself and her life. Unfortunately, Ms. Woods did not live to see her piece published in Lunch Ticket, but her family has established the Diana Woods Award for Creative Writing to be awarded to an outstanding entrant in creative nonfiction. Keep an eye on the Lunch Ticket website for more details about the award and how to enter.

The Lunch Ticket staff has had to make some tough choices. We’ve made decisions about the look and feel of the magazine that will premier in future issues, and we’ve had some lively discussions about what constitutes exceptional art and literature.  Even though history will probably not be made by any of our decisions, we knew that on the one end are our authors whose hearts and souls went into the words you’ll read on Lunch Ticket, and on the other end are our readers who deserve to have their horizons broadened and their minds expanded. We took our responsibility seriously, and we hope that it shows with the outstanding literature and art we’ve put together in this issue.