Enclosed in this issue’s digital covers are stories with surrealism, fabulism, and magical realism twisting through their letters. In these stories, you’ll find characters who deal with the hard realities of life crises by spinning them into gossamer reimaginings.
 

In “Motherhood,” by Teri Moore, a mother morphs through different animal identities as she struggles to raise her children. A man refashions his imploding relationship into a delicate mythology in Matthew Talamini’s “Zeus and Earth and Light.” In “Garden on Bones” by Samantha Toner, a woman transmutes her sister’s deceased body into a garden of beauty. A daughter slides through different rooms as she searches for her mother in a French museum in “Real” by debut author Karoline Schaufler. In “Illuminated,” by Sarah Richter, a nurse rearranges the ugliness in the world by showing her own kindness.

 

We didn’t set out to find stories full of “ism”—rather, these stories set out to find us. They formed in the heads of their writers, slipped out of fingers onto keyboards, and appeared at our doorstep asking to be introduced to the world, asking to be introduced to you. Now that they’re found you, what will you do?

 

Stephanie Katz

Editor-In-Chief