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A Note From the Editors

By Betsy Loomans '01 & Gwen Vahl '00


Welcome to the 2000 Writing Anthology! As you can see, we have had our hands full this semester! We received nearly 50 excellent papers, and from these submissions we selected 15. We would like to extend a sincere congratulations to all those chosen to be part of this year’ s Anthology–your papers have not only competed in a strong pool but have also passed our difficult standards.

Since we have already praised the quality of papers we received, one could imagine the difficulty we met with when deciding the winners of the annual John Allen Award. Though every one of the papers selected for this Anthology was superb, we feel that three specific papers were the stronger candidates for the special recognition: “The Sky Over Our Heads'” by Lorena Fernández-Quiñones, “Polishing Ground Level” by Jenny Stahr, and “Militant Anabaptism” by Bryan T. Klassen.

Very important people need to be recognized as key players in this publication. Walter Cannon, Mark Johnson and Lyn Isaacson were always energetic, insightful and fair–desirable and extraordinary traits for such a task. Much gratitude and appreciation t0 Cyndi Atkins, who was patient, diligent and always prepared to work; and our sincerest thanks to Randa Van Dyk for helping us get started. Also, thank you to the artists who offered the brilliant work found throughout The Writing Anthology. We’ve enjoyed co-editing The Writing Anthology, and we hope you will enjoy the final product as much as we do!

Betsy Loomans, Co-Editor
Gwen Vahl, Co-Editor