System Failure, The Year 2025
- Leslie Jill Patterson
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
You can plan and plan, but you can’t control everything. About seven years ago, we worked hard to get ourselves ahead in production, completing issues one year that would run in the next, and I always believed that because we did work so far ahead of release dates, nothing could ever stop IHLR from hitting its marks.
I was wrong.
Sometimes system failures—things so completely out of our control we never even considered them possible threats—bring an entire operation to a complete halt.
The first week of the fall semester, we discovered that Texas Tech University had not paid (in fact, had rejected payment for) the typesetting software we use. We could no longer access any files that we had built and proofread in the spring of 2024—meaning we didn’t have access to any issue that was supposed to head to the printer and be released in the fall of 2024 and spring of 2025.
Our computer equipment, we discovered next, was so old, that even when Texas Tech did purchase our software back, we couldn't open the current software and build new files because our computers wouldn’t support the current software.
We ordered new computer equipment, but it didn’t arrive until the first week of December. The entire fall semester, we sat on our hands. In very old versions of our software, purchased outright years ago, we could build proofreading files (for issues that would go out on New Year’s Eve 2024 and in last spring and then summer 2025—manuscripts we had accepted in the fall). But when the new computers finally arrived, the new software couldn’t open those proofreading files, so we had to rebuild them, too. In total: we’ve rebuilt five issues—typesetting, proofreading, final design, all of it—in one semester.
When IHLR 26.2 did return from the printer in early March, we prepared to ship it. Stuffed the envelopes and packed the crates for the post office. But that very night, a central plant at Texas Tech exploded, which sent chemical flames and who knows what else all over campus (you may have seen this on national news). Resulting power outages blanketed campus, and it shut down for two weeks. We weren’t allowed into our offices until the Monday after spring break—when our building experienced yet another power outage that sent us all home again.
At the time, we were waiting for funds for our bulk mail account—the university released the check for postage the day of the explosions, which meant the check wandered all over campus for two weeks and just barely landed in our mailbox, two weeks later, right before we left for AWP.
Meanwhile, we filed requisitions to pay contributors for those issues we had rebuilt and released—according to the university’s payment system initiated in Spring 2024. The university immediately rejected every requisition because they had initiated an even newer payment process. When we tried using this newest mandatory system, we received a message that it wouldn’t process royalty payments. Texas Tech had to fix that system. Worse, some of our contributors can’t be paid using the newest system because they do not live in the U.S. or are not citizens (hmmm, wonder what’s causing this way of thinking?), so they are waiting for payments in the old system that doesn’t appear to have anyone running it.
At the point, we’ve gone a little mad. No, seriously. But AWP lifted our spirits, and we are back at work and catching up. I swear we’ll be on track again by mid-May when our offices close for the semester.
It’s obviously the year 2025 in every way possible, and we’ve had some drama, but we have our jobs, our funding still exists because Texas Tech does support the arts, and we’re going to be okay. We’re sending all of our support to those who haven’t been so lucky—. May all of the writers in America keep sending out their words.
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Leslie Jill Patterson is the founding editor of Iron Horse Literary Review. Her nonfiction and fiction have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including, most recently, Kenyon Review, Fourth Genre, Riverteeth, and Pushcart XLIX (2025). She has edited IHLR since its inception in 1999.