I remember vividly the first San Francisco art event I attended as a local arts editor. Or is it that I remember what I wrote, which was my incoming address as editorial director of Open Space? Ten years on, it’s difficult to separate the Bay Area I know in “real” life from the one I know through words — my words, sure, but mostly the myriad words of others, words I’ve delighted in, disagreed with, pulled my hair out over, and played around with in all the ways that add up to being an editor. It’s been a trip, engrossing and exhausting and everything in between.  

I write these words, my outgoing dispatch as editor of The Back Room, not from my old Oakland apartment but from my new home in Maine. The end of TBR’s current season will mark the end of the three-year program’s existence as conceived of and directed by me, with immense and invaluable input from Syd Staiti, Madeline Hernandez, Theadora Walsh, Noah Ross, and Maxe Crandall, and from the many collaborating organizations and individual contributors who have made it what it is. When we wrap in June, TBR will have published fifty-two works created through the collective efforts of seventy-four writers, visual and performing artists, translators, archivists, architects, journalists, transcribers, editors, recording engineers, art historians, arts workers, and more. Many of our contributors are from the Bay; they are also from Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Berlin, Singapore, New York, Puerto Rico, Montreal, Gothenburg, Fukuoka, and elsewhere.

When Syd, SPT’s previous director, asked me to create an online publishing program for the organization, it was with the knowledge of too many local publications having folded in recent years — but also that San Francisco, boom-and-bust-town that it is, is always trying new things out, and that its small and vital organizations, SPT among them, are in “a constant state of reflection, re-examination, and adjustment.”

This state, of course, is where so much good writing springs from, where it lives. When I was imagining what TBR could be, I thought of the various rooms (within rooms) people inhabit, and the fellow travelers we meet who form another kind of architecture, ephemeral and profound. I hoped to invite conversations across disciplines, scenes, generations, and geographies, while remaining true to this place, the Bay Area of seekers and lovers and dreamers. Most of all, I wanted to give people room to do what they wanted to do. Room to wander and to get lost, to change and be surprised. (What a beautiful surprise for me that translation ended up threading its way through multiple seasons — and also entirely predictable in hindsight, as the act of translation encompasses and escapes so many of the above elements; I am hearing these Yoko Tawada words, which are also the words of her translator, Susan Bernofsky, “The patient kept only his own translation, as is often the case in life.”)

It’s good for things to change, even (sometimes especially) to end, making room for other things. The Back Room succeeded Traffic Report, and now something else will come into being. It’s not for me to speculate on what might follow TBR, or how it might stick around in altered fashion — but I’m excited to know what the future, shaped by other hands, will hold for me as a reader and fan.

And, you know, back rooms are also great places for parties. So we’re gonna have one, June 9, at Cushion Works, to celebrate this lovely thing we made. Details to follow. Save the date. More words to come.

With love & thanks,

clr