This month’s issue of Fringe features sleek new web design, and chic new literature. Here’s a gloss of the issue:

• In her series of poems Fragments from a Nonexistent Yiddish Poet, Jehanne Dubrow takes on the persona of Ida Lewin, and captures a nostalgia for a past where the social order was regimented, and therefore a little safer.
• Jackson Bliss transports us into the world of limo drivers, and then beyond, into the realm of the unexpected in the short short Change Gonna Come.
• Holly Anderson and Sev Coursen’s series of poems The Secret Language of Flowers is, perhaps, the most formally unusual piece we’ve published — click around and you’ll see.
• Venus Envy tells the story of a woman who is done with beauty, who goes to extraordinary lengths to lift herself out of the status quo and into the heroic.
• Mihaly Flandorffer Peniche‘s work is graphic. His bold use of color and simply-rendered figures make his images feel mythical as cave paintings.
• In her excellent piece of criticism, Jaffney Rood explains what happens when academic culture collides with working-class students.
• Another Kind of Nigger, Matthew Haynes’ nonfiction piece, riffs on the theme of Ethnos, which we will take up again in February. Haynes, half-Hawaiian, half-white, recounts devastating incidents from his childhood.

And just to keep your eyes on the horizon, remember to submit for our Ethnos issue — the submission deadline has been extended to December 31. The polls for the 25 Books Project are still open — so get your vote in soon!