Dear Readers, Writers, and Friends of The Maine Review,
Why write? is a question I sometimes ask my students.
And for that matter, Why read?
I’m not being theoretical or coy when I ask these questions; I’m really asking. Beyond the more-or-less predicted university stresses of midterms and breakups, some students are facing deaths of loved ones, homelessness, incidents of racial violence. Some have family members stranded continents away, sheltering in bunkers. Some are finding their most personal fears politicized, or their ideals made personal. In such a time of tumult, violence, and uncertainty, why write?
I don’t have an answer for all (or even most) people, projects, or polycrises. But as a writer, reader, and editor, I’ve found literature to be a venue for extraordinary generosity and humanity.
The pages in this issue are rife with such generosity and humanity. These stories and poems run the gamut from comforting to confrontational, searing to uplifting. They are celebrating, mourning, recovering, regrouping, attempting. Living.
Thank you, writers, for your courage in creating your work.
Thank you, readers, for sharing in it.
And thank you all for being part of the Maine Review community. I’m sincerely grateful.
–A. J. Bermudez, Editor of The Maine Review
