Writing our Lives and our Changing World.

I’m thinking of the iconic photograph of the beautiful, lone flower that miraculously blooms in the crack of a concrete sidewalk. Thriving, not merely surviving. Someone had the insight to document that miracle of nature.

That is what we do when we write and share our stories, whether they’re about the good, the bad or the miraculous—each serves as a link to our world. Take the health pandemic that gripped our world in March 2020, a health scourge so horrific it left no corner of the world untouched. We all read the stories and heard the news reports of COVID’s horrific impact on families and children around the world. But, what of our own personal experiences? How were our personal lives, our families and communities changed?

Your story may be the very one that answers the questions for the next generation who will surely ask the hard questions about our world, some 100 years from now. While we are taught that we write for ourselves first and foremost, I pray that some of us feel the charge to write for others, to help ensure a better tomorrow. I’ve been thinking a lot about what this harsh season has meant for writers and other creatives. I applaud those who found a way to survive and thrive despite it all. I celebrate those who found ways to make stories part of the solution—elevating stories of our past, using them as bridges to our future.

We hope you will help celebrate our five years of being a part of the literary community, by taking time to read this Fifth Anniversary Edition of the Southern Anthology. While each story speaks to our writers’ personal experiences, they also speak to our world today and yesterday. The power of stories is inarguable. They teach us about ourselves and our world. Stories make us better, make us know our worth. The strength of our world, our people, is in how we value and remember our stories.