Letter from the Editor
In early September, right as I and the other editors began considering pieces for this issue, I finished Marina Keegan’s first and only collection, The Opposite of Loneliness. Marina died tragically at 22 only five days after graduating magna cum laude from Yale. All the essays and stories in The Opposite of Loneliness are pieces she wrote in college or high school, and they’re good. They’re not simply good for someone her age, although they of course are. They’re good for any writer of any age.
In introducing Marina’s writing, her former professor Anne Fadiman says the following:
“Many of my students sound forty years old. They are articulate but derivative, their own voices muffled by their desire to skip over their current age and experience, which they fear trivial, and land on some version of polished adulthood without passing Go. Marina was twenty-one and sounded twenty-one: a brainy twenty-one, a twenty-one who knew her way around the English language, a twenty-one who understood that there were few better subjects than being young and uncertain and starry-eyed and frustrated and hopeful.”
I found myself thinking of this quote over and over while reviewing submissions. I wanted writings that sounded thirteen or sixteen or eighteen: a mature, emotionally intelligent, intellectually curious, self-aware thirteen or sixteen or eighteen, but a thirteen or sixteen or eighteen nonetheless. The world doesn’t need more authors imitating David Foster Wallace, Jane Austen, or William Shakespeare. The world does, however, need Derek Chen, Faith Michaels, Sophia Cetina, and every other wonderful writer featured in this issue. Because they’re good. They’re good not just as teenage writers but as writers in general. And they’re good in large part because their writings are wholly, unequivocally teenaged in the best way possible.
Now go witness their uncertainty, their fear, their hope, their sheer insistence to influence the world. Go let them impress you. They will.
Courtney Felle
Editor-In-Chief
Marriah Talbott-Malone Prose Editor
Maheen Shahbazi Poetry Editor
In early September, right as I and the other editors began considering pieces for this issue, I finished Marina Keegan’s first and only collection, The Opposite of Loneliness. Marina died tragically at 22 only five days after graduating magna cum laude from Yale. All the essays and stories in The Opposite of Loneliness are pieces she wrote in college or high school, and they’re good. They’re not simply good for someone her age, although they of course are. They’re good for any writer of any age.
In introducing Marina’s writing, her former professor Anne Fadiman says the following:
“Many of my students sound forty years old. They are articulate but derivative, their own voices muffled by their desire to skip over their current age and experience, which they fear trivial, and land on some version of polished adulthood without passing Go. Marina was twenty-one and sounded twenty-one: a brainy twenty-one, a twenty-one who knew her way around the English language, a twenty-one who understood that there were few better subjects than being young and uncertain and starry-eyed and frustrated and hopeful.”
I found myself thinking of this quote over and over while reviewing submissions. I wanted writings that sounded thirteen or sixteen or eighteen: a mature, emotionally intelligent, intellectually curious, self-aware thirteen or sixteen or eighteen, but a thirteen or sixteen or eighteen nonetheless. The world doesn’t need more authors imitating David Foster Wallace, Jane Austen, or William Shakespeare. The world does, however, need Derek Chen, Faith Michaels, Sophia Cetina, and every other wonderful writer featured in this issue. Because they’re good. They’re good not just as teenage writers but as writers in general. And they’re good in large part because their writings are wholly, unequivocally teenaged in the best way possible.
Now go witness their uncertainty, their fear, their hope, their sheer insistence to influence the world. Go let them impress you. They will.
Courtney Felle
Editor-In-Chief
Marriah Talbott-Malone Prose Editor
Maheen Shahbazi Poetry Editor