Dear Friends and Readers,

As another semester winds to an end, I want to thank you sincerely for choosing to read our latest volume. This volume represents countless hours of meetings, emails, and late-night Discord messages. It is truly a labor of love, from the talented contributors who entrust us with their words to the dedicated staff without whom none of this would be possible.

Community has been on my mind lately: the ones that find us, the ones we seek out, the ones we strive to create. Building community as an undergraduate is incredibly rewarding, but it is difficult work. I urge you to find those moments of belonging and hold on to them, cultivate them for those who will come after you. Whether it’s a single person or a group of people, a poem or a place. Part of the beauty is in the impermanence. And time passes quickly– we go from newcomers to old-timers in an instant, realizing with a start that none of the faces around us are the same. How bittersweet change can be!

On a personal note, my graduation is in a few weeks. Coming to terms with this goodbye is harder than I expected; my work here feels like it’s just begun! Someday soon, I’ll forget the password to the Google Drive. My name will be an indexed search result on the website, a fuzzy memory from someone’s first Boldface Conference, a reference to an earlier era of Glass Mountain. My eternal gratitude goes out to everyone at Glass Mountain. You are all brilliant, fearless writers and I can’t wait to see where you go next. 

Friends, it’s been an honor. Happy reading!