Dear Readers, 

It is my honor to present to you Issue 2 of the Under Review. It’s hard to believe just over five months ago we were celebrating the launch of this journal with the party and reading for Issue 1. It was a night I won’t soon forget: family, friends, the vibrant literary community of the Twin Cities, and our lovely contributors came together at the Black Hart of Saint Paul in the Midway neighborhood and filled the private bar to the rafters. 

At the end of that first Saturday night of 2020, I sat at one of the Black Hart’s rickety hightops with some contributors, friends, and our managing editor Meghan Maloney-Vinz, recapping the reading between plays of the Patriots/Titans playoff game on TV. A friend asked the innocent question, ‘how are you guys going to top that?’ 

My mind started racing with ideas of what Issue 2 could be like, how to promote it, how to have an even bigger launch party, but mostly with the curiosity of what would happen in sports and in the world that would inform the voices in Issue 2. Any thoughts I had that night about what the first half of 2020 might look have all proven irrelevant.

The tragic deaths of Kobe and Gianna Bryant, and the seven friends with them in that helicopter still sting like a fresh wound, but somehow feels like a tragedy from another lifetime. COVID-19 unfolding in real time, forcing us into solitude, while claiming loved ones, livelihoods, and, on a far less important scale but still noticeable and powerful, the sports seasons we adore and the plans we had for them.

Amid the pandemic, perhaps as a coping mechanism, the world spent five weeks enthralled with Michael Jordan and The Last Dance. It may have been the equivalent of putting a band-aid on a broken leg for sports fans desperate to fill the void in their lives, but it gave us the chance to engage with the past, to live briefly in those memorable moments of the NBA in the 90s and remember the younger versions of ourselves. It was an unprecedented and global television event surrounding the most globally iconic athlete we’ve ever known. And just as our world was opening up again, our next global crisis revealed itself in a nine minute video. We all watched in horror as George Floyd was murdered under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer.

In this fractured world, sports are trying to return, but should they? Notable NBA players are having discussions about sitting out the proposed return to the season to keep protesting, to keep fighting for justice for our communities of people of color. Even if the WNBA season were taking place as planned right now, it would be doing so without Maya Moore, out for a second year now, called instead to fight for the justice of innocent men in prison and emerging as a leading voice speaking out for criminal justice reform.  

How will the last few months of 2020 inform sports when they have all returned? How will they inform our thinking and writing of them? We’ve seen encouraging baby steps in the right direction. NASCAR has finally banned the Confederate flag at all of its events, the U.S. Soccer Federation has finally abolished its ban on players peacefully protesting during the national anthem, and the NFL has finally admitted to being in the wrong when it came to players protesting, but notably failed to mention Colin Kaepernick by name in their admission...  

It didn’t feel right to publish on June 1st as we originally planned. We felt it was necessary to postpone the launch of Issue 2 to focus on protesting, volunteering, and supporting our embattled community and the uprising around it in any way we could. With this in mind, Issue 2 of the Under Review is free, the supplemental digital content we are currently producing to replace the launch celebration will be free, but we’d like to ask all who can to donate to Black Trans groups and organizations. Visit here to make a donation of any amount to be split among all the organizations listed, or allocate funds to a specific group.  

It also didn’t feel right to continue the postponement of this issue any longer and further suppress the voices represented in these pages, especially those from BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities. The voices presented in Issue 2 are a celebration of sport and the recognition of the joy it provides us in difficult times. We have work that speaks directly to those difficult times, private and public, past and present. While sport can be a distraction and reprieve from that reality, it also allows us a filter through which we can see things more clearly, and more distilled if we choose. 

We fully lean into our commitment to feature writers, editors, and reviewing books of folks traditionally left out of sports literature: BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and women. The work in this issue does just that, and we are proud to present it to the world.

Sincerely,

Terry Horstman
Executive Editor
the Under Review

Click here to read Issue 2:

Special thanks are due to Patrick Sexton for the beautiful artwork. To Carlee Tressel-Alson, G.O.A.T. contributing editor. To JP Bertram, the Steve Kerr of web gurus. And to Meghan Maloney-Vinz, the Michael Jordan to my Scott Burrell.  

The Under Review has big plans for the year ahead. In the coming weeks, we’ll be launching With the Call, the official podcast of the Under Review. We also plan to add more features to the website, more regular content, and the most important goal of all: getting to a place where we can pay our contributors. If you can, I’d like to ask you to consider donating any amount to the Under Review to support our editors and writers. We hope to be here for you for a long time, and any little bit of support will help us go a long way.