EDITOR’S NOTE

A year ago, as I sat at home assembling the previous issue of the Stonesthrow Review, I found myself casting my imagination ahead to this moment. Wondering what the world would be like in a year? Would we still be locked inside, unable to leave? Would we see our loved ones again? Would there be toilet paper at the grocery store? And what words, I asked myself, would we find in the meantime?

Words, I’ve always understood, are the way that we human beings make sense of things. How we mark the passage of time, and how we define that time as it passes. Will they be hopeful words? Fearful words? Resilient words or words about everything falling apart?

Well, we contain multitudes, it’s said—and so we have written all of those words, and many more, day by day, each in turn. Like so many others, I began keeping a diary during the early months of COVID, jotting down my fears and worries, and the little things I did with my children to pass the days: art projects, walks in the woods, daring ventures into hardware stores looking for masks and gloves—and toilet paper. But soon I abandoned the diary. I found I wanted to write about anything but the pandemic—to journey with words to places I could not go in reality. It reminded me a lot of the way that I first turned to writing as a child, with no autonomy except in my imagination, where it was entirely limitless.

There’s a sense of that same exact wonder, I think, laced inside of all the poems, plays, stories, and essays that we selected for this, our 16th annual Stonesthrow Review. Cognizant of all we’ve lost, I’m also brought to think of all we have actually done with these past 365 days. All the things we’ve imagined, and made. These words, then, mark the passage of another year in this changing world. Tomorrow starts another, so—start now. Look for the words you’ll use to mark its going. Once you’ve found them, we’ll be here to share them. Count on that.

— The Editors