Collection Eight: Spring 2026
In an era marked by fragmentation, isolation, and uncertainty, the works gathered in this collection emerge from a shared desire to reconnect—with one another, with ourselves, and with the worlds we inhabit. Responding to a call centered on the intimate and enduring form of the letter, these submissions explore the many ways people seek understanding, offer witness, and reach across emotional, social, and political distance. The pieces assembled here remind us that letters are never merely private exchanges; they are acts of vulnerability and imagination that invite dialogue, reflection, and change. Whether addressed to loved ones, strangers, ancestors, places, or even the self, each contribution speaks to the deeply human need to be heard and to belong–and to use those understandings to forge a new world together. Together, these works navigate grief, memory, celebration, longing, conflict, and hope, demonstrating how creative expression can bridge divides that, at times, feel insurmountable, bringing us closer to a world that seems distant, yet possible.
This collection is made possible by our wonderful editors this semester, Ava McKendry and Bianca Fairchild.
“Dear Now” by Heidi Kraay
…and our children’s children and their friends and pets
neighborhoods forests
and their backyards their preschools and Technicolor
rainbow raincoats
“Dissonance” by Alea Faddis
To my hometown, Boise, Idaho,
The city that has held me throughout my youth, sprouted my soul, and nurtured my roots.
“Dear Madre” by Karen Edgerton
So today the debt I owe you, my dear Madre, is one of gratitude. Gratitude for illuminating the changes in me. For creating a better person than the one I was on that day in 1999.
“Boise and the Spaces Between Us” by Cinthia Marquez
No. It’s the feeling you give me when I am not in your beautiful landscapes, but when I am in tight spaces where I can look at the people around me and realize I look nothing like them.
“Dear Steps of Serendipity Through a Boise Neighborhood” By Ava McKendry
I don’t want to get out of bed. I don’t want to do anything for that matter. But then I shut my front door and walk.
“Letter to My Hometown” By Gia Codina
When we stand at the top of Camel’s Back Park, we aren’t just standing on a hill of a certain elevation. We are standing in a space that holds the memory of every sunset watched by the native peoples long before a single paved road existed, and those that are still watched by those who call Boise “home” today.
“Returning Public Lands to Indigenous Peoples” by Kyle Boggs
But we should begin with a harder truth: the phrase “public lands” has always been a euphemism for stolen Indigenous lands.