Letter from a Faculty Advisor

Dear 12th Street Readers,

Spring 2025 was my last semester as the journal’s faculty advisor, after 8 years in the role. Ted Kerr—writer, activist, and faculty colleague—now steps into the faculty advisor role. Check out 12st’s interview with Kerr from 2024, with Zachary Lynn.

Thank you to all of our past staff and contributors for the breadth and depth of work 12th Street has published. Readers, please dive in.

I was honored to return to my MFA alma mater in 2017 as part-time faculty. By that time, my work was entrenched into a common, maybe millennial-signaling, creative-adjacent combination of teaching, editing, and writing. It was a bet on me, and I am grateful.

When I came on, the journal had recently stopped publishing in print. Over the years since, we’ve carried 12th Street into a new media landscape and matured an online reading venue that schedules releases throughout the year.

I believe in 12th Street because it offers opportunities for empathy and community, while functioning as a digital creative stage. The publishing process brings people and ideas together and ultimately benefits everyone involved. Editor and writer draw out the humanizing strengths of a work, and work from an agreement that writing grows with care for the process.

The values-in-action of the 12th Street project—sanctuary, acceptance, care—continue. It’s a journal for and by The New School. At the journal the staff gather to find joy and seek consensus, making space for campus voices, each year editors take seriously the namesake “Writing and Democracy,” and what the responsibilities are between the two.

To the staff, my publishing students, of these past years, thank you. You’ve taught me more than I could give in return, but I have loved doing my best.

Sincerely,

Seth Graves
Faculty Advisor, 12th Street, 2017–25