We’ve had lots of people in Abridged. Really, lots. We hope that says that the things we do resonate with people. We admit we don’t make it easy for you. We don’t make it easy on ourselves either if it’s any consolation. We decided that there was little point replicating the print edition of the magazine when we went online. It would have bored you and us. That’s not to say we don’t love the print editions. We do of course. But we thought we could keep the spirit of the magazine by not giving you directions and leaving you to fend for yourselves so to speak. Lose yourself and find yourself in each issue as it were. And that’s worked really well and we’ll continue to do it. However we thought we’d create An Abridged Index of the Zone as a kind of mythic GPS to lead you to the ramshackle cottages filled with sinister old ladies who may or may not dine on intrepid young explorers in case you were really lost. It’s not a complete map of the Abridged world, we have yet to add the people from our Abridged One site. The good news is we’ll be doing that during the coming twelve months. Anyway here be dragons…
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The online Zone was essentially not only our practical response to the pandemic (every where that stocked the Abridged was closed) but also our aesthetic response, which, was actually to keep doing what we’ve been doing for years. Persephone, Eris, Echo, Trivia, Nemesis, Apocrypha, Judgement, themes mostly chosen before the pandemic hit but amplified greatly by the fear and uncertainty it brought. Looking at this Index of the Zone we see a consistency that is obviously conscious (we chose the work) but we think there are subconscious links to the work and issues that we only see later. We should think everyone that has supported us in this difficult time, especially the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, The Arts Council of Ireland, Derry City and Strabane District Council plus our friends at Verbal, the Golden Thread Gallery and RUA RED in particular. Plus of course our contributors and our readers. As ever we couldn’t do it without you. We wouldn’t want to.