Issue Forty-One: Summer 2026

The contributors in our summer issue remind us that human beings are not the sole authors of meaning. We live among other lives, other histories, and other ways of experiencing the world. Sometimes, we notice them. Often, we don’t. Throughout the issue, birds, insects, rivers, flowers, trees, weather, and wild places appear not as scenery but as fellow participants in the world we share. What unites these pieces is less a subject than a way of looking. Whether writing about travel, memory, faith, grief, or home, the contributors gathered here practice a kind of sustained attention—to places, to other lives, and to the often-overlooked details that shape our understanding of the world. Issue Forty-One includes work by Becky Boling, Clementine Mendelson, D. E. Green, Elizabeth Shanaz, George Franklin, John DeAngelo, Joseph Mills, Josiane Kouagheu, Keri Withington, Laura Hannett, Maria Koors, Rebecca G. Biber, Robert McNamara, Ruth Holzer, Ryan Di Francesco, Sharyn Wolf, and Val Margolius.