In Memory of Ed Hogan

Ed Hogan: In Memoriam, by Askold Melnyczuk

The last time I saw Ed Hogan, founding editor of Aspect Magazine and Zephyr Press, was in June for a huge Sunday breakfast at the Somerville Diner, mere blocks from the house where he was born, and five months before he was to drown in a canoeing accident in Maine.

It was a neighborhood of triple-deckers, wire fences, and closely packed buildings. The food was “good,” the lines for a booth were long, and we chose to sit at the counter. We both ordered pancakes, bacon, homefries. Ed was tall and thin; he ate like a fat man. But he biked everywhere, sometimes riding the same three-speed he used commuting to Northeastern University more than twenty years before. Our conversation that morning was typically wide-ranging. Ed loved to talk—he had enormous affection for his friends and he loved remembering them almost as much as he relished rehearsing, in indefatigable detail, his latest Zephyr project.

Read the full editor’s note