Editorial: Literature as Shapeshifter
Our big trip this summer was to Washington State where, among other things, we hiked, swam, kayaked, and reconnected with family. And also where, on a rainy day in downtown Friday Harbor, I found the San Juan Island Museum of Art, a small collection that showcases indigenous artists. Themed “shapeshifters” and taking the trickster Raven as its mascot, their exhibit this summer discusses how we survive by changing shape.
As I sat with the gorgeous and well-curated pieces, this theme really sank in to my soul. We live in a time (and I’m of an age), where it feels like a lot of things are shifting, quickly and rather destructively. Art itself feels threatened by funding cuts and AI slop.
And yet, here is a celebration of modern artists using inherited styles or techniques to reinterpret lore, to challenge themselves and their audience, and to convey a new generation of experience.
It was inspiring and hopeful!
I feel the same about the collection of stories in this issue. Within these pages you will find examples of meta-fiction. You will find authors that are engaging in conversation with literature that has come before them. You will find characters telling their own story, not the one written for them. You will find writers playing with structure and words.
Because reinterpretation is part of the joy of creation.
Our first story this month is “Silence, in the Doorway, with a Gun” by Nadia Radovich. This piece is a retelling of Le Romance de Silence, a 13th century story known for being an early treatise on gender identity.
Leo Rein’s “Yet Another Unforgettable Luncheon” also speaks directly to works that have come before—this time that of the beloved Hercule Poirot mystery series by Agatha Christie.
In Wen Wen Yang’s “Out of Print,” characters of a story start to fade as a book is no longer read. For better or worse—that is for the reader to determine.
Beth Goder offers a setting that is a character in “Emerald Gears,” in which we see an intergalactic marketplace evolve and interact with its patrons.
In “The Things You Bought for the Robot,” Stefan Alcalá Slater uses a listing format and second-person point of view to depict a family coming to terms with their new household assistant.
Finally, we have two stories this month that continue the conversation about families and generations. In Guan Un’s “The Last Items of the Forgotten Hero or The Grandchild’s First Dragon,” a grandfather is narrating his adventures to his granddaughter as she discovers the artifacts he brought home years before.
And in our closer, “The Forest Through the Teas,” Wendy Nikel depicts a grandma struggling to connect to her granddaughter. To fully capture the disconnect, the language of the older generation is expertly laced with puns.
Just as animals adapt, art and literature can survive by changing shape. Like the weather, culture can go beyond geopolitical boundaries. Like the water, it has currents. Like the earth, it can ground, uplift, and even rumble.
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Ⓒ Rebecca Halsey