Dear Readers,

 

A letter is a concrete slice of time, a small blip in the universe’s grand lifeline. Through it, we see a story told—no matter how fleeting or how eternal. As we reflect on this past year, there are so many moments we both ache to return to and wish to forget. A year full of “unprecedented times”, Zoom meetings, distance, frustration, and grief, the letters we’ve written and received have been wishes for the pandemic to end, and as each month has passed us by, we’ve grown into sorrow.

 

But this letter—this little slice of time—is not to grieve the past year, as insurmountable and exhausting as it’s been. It’s to celebrate the power of words, the capacity of stories, and how lucky we are to tell them through this period of strangeness and uncertainty. Within these pages, you’ll find the magic and resonance of traveling through Amy O’Neill’s gorgeous seas and states. You’ll discover the gentleness of discovering new connections within Brandi Shapland’s adventure to Florida, and the bond between human and animal. Through the vulnerability that Wale Ayinla and Alejandro Lucero offer us, you’ll delve into the meaning of inheritance, legacy, and forging new paths. You’ll see the layers of relationships—from the fleeting moments of intimacy Genna Edwards writes about, to authenticity of identity and the intricacy of love in Virginia Kane’s lyric. You’ll see the way our minds and hearts travel through universes we dream about in a time where adventure is nothing more than a memory. Stories live on, even while we’re static. They’re a pulsing, eternal heartbeat. In this issue, we hope you’ll find emotion, truth, and fantasy, all which carried us, the editors, through such a strange year. There’s something so sacred about the act of sharing words, and we are delighted we get to bridge the gap between creator, editor, and reader in this year full of disconnect. We hope this letter is a familiar one, written with vitality—vivid and real. We hope this little slice of time we’ve been lucky enough to share with you all stands as an eternal, fixed testament to the time where the world stood still. As Elizabeth Muscari writes, “I wished I could just keep you, just like this, forever”, we hope this issue of The Susquehanna Review brings you comfort, familiarity, and revelation—a place made for returning, and returning again, long after the moment’s gone.

 

For these words, and the feelings they evoke, we thank our contributors. We thank our editors, our reading boards, our advisors, and our staff for such care and effort to create something so meaningful in a time so fragile. And we thank you, our dear reader, for choosing solace in these words.

 

With love, endurance, and hope,

 

Amy, Taylor, Monet, & Tyla