Dear Readers,

Louisa Thomas is one of my favorite writers. She isn’t one of my favorite sports writers. She isn’t one of my favorite culture writers. She isn’t one of my favorite goddamnit-how-is-this-individual-so-spectacularly-talented-they-get-to-make-perfect-art-for-The-New-Yorker-for-a-living writers. She is simply one of my favorite writers. She often does write about sports for The New Yorker, yes, but to call her a ‘sports writer’ is to only talk about where her writing launches from and omits the universe of human emotions and complexities that her work is in constant conversation with.

In Louisa’s (I’m going with first names here in the hope we’ll be friends one day) phenomenal essay, ‘Serena Williams, Andy Murray, and a Political Wimbledon,’ she discusses many things in an air-tight word count of 1,284 (this is me asking you to please send us your work, Louisa). A central theme at hand is the idea of sport when its adjacent to turmoil. The 2016 Wimbledon took place in the shadow of the UK’s vote to leave the European Union. It took place on the same bloody, tragic days that took the lives of Alton Sterling and Philando Castille. As Louisa writes in the essay, ‘It was impossible to avoid thinking about politics during Wimbledon.’

The men’s champion, Scotsman Andy Murray, was tied to Brexit. On the morning of the men’s final, amidst everything else going on in the world, the front page of the Observer read ‘ANDY PLEASE CHEER US UP.’ The women’s champion, demigoddess Serena Williams, was vocal about the tragedies taking place on her home soil and continued to use her platform to speak up about respect for women in both sport and society. Any idiot screaming ‘stick to sports,’ the official and pathetic rallying cry of the world’s Twitter trolls, was mercifully drowned out.      

Louisa writes with particular mastery in the essay’s final paragraph, describing the final moments of the women’s singles championship. Williams defeated Angelique Kerber in the final. Kerber had emerged as the closest thing to a ‘rival’ to Serena, and had beaten her in a marathon final match at the Australian Open six months earlier. Louisa writes: 

“At this Wimbledon, (Serena) has owned not only her greatness but her role as a transcendent figure in society. Still, she rises. She generates her own context. I thought of that at the end of her match, as she and Kerber lingered at the net in a long, tight hug. The picture—an African-American and a blond German of Polish descent, their arms intertwined—stayed with me. There was nothing political meant by the embrace, of course. It was a gesture of admiration, affection, and respect. It was no more a political act than an ace. And yet there was something powerful to it. We sometimes project our problems onto sports. But sports can also be, in some small but real ways, where we start to work them out.”

I’ve thought a lot about those last two sentences in the years since that Wimbledon. They were on my mind when our managing editor, Meghan Maloney-Vinz, and I sat down and took the first steps in pursuing this project. And they were ever present as I read the work that now makes up the pilot issue of the Under Review. The fearless poetry, the fierce prose, and the stunning visuals from graphic designer Patrick Sexton, all bring these two marvelous sentences to the life we could only imagine when we set out on this journey almost one year ago.    

To call the writing in this issue ‘sports writing,’ would be to only talk about the place the writing launches from. In reality, this work speaks to the heart of the human condition and all of its failing, wandering, loving, lusting, glorious mess. 

To borrow some wisdom from brilliant Louisa: as fans, friends, artists, writers, and humans, we sometimes do project our problems onto sports. The Under Review is a small but real space, where we can start to work them out. 

Sincerely,

Terry Horstman

Executive Editor of the Under Review

Click here to read our pilot issue:

A few notes of thanks, 

Thank you, readers, it’s all for you. 

Thank you, contributors, I imagined a very good journal on day one. You made it a great one. I’m indebted to each of you.     

Thank you, JP Bertram, our resident SquareSpace expert and expert ‘Terry Botherer.’ I’m lost without you.

Thank you, Jennifer Trebisovsky, your bold and beautiful artwork has given us a website that only dreams are made of.

Thank you, Patrick Sexton, for translating my nonsense into a work of magic. You have super powers.   

Thank you, Meghan Maloney-Vinz, for everything.