May/June 2026 Issue Preview
Reasons to Rejoice
“L’Chaim!” Two hundred glasses raised in unison on a Saturday evening just before this issue went to press.
The celebration had an air of the uncanny: it had to be relocated late in the planning process when the original site, the synagogue and school across the street, was attacked. We couldn’t see signs of the substantial damage when we pulled up, but were unnerved by the police barriers and national disaster service vehicles. Still, we’re a part of a community whose response to such attacks trends life-affirming. So on it all went, hope-filled and vivacious: the wedding, the celebration, the new beginnings.
I had an issue favorite on my mind throughout the evening: *Earth 7, *which is also about love in the midst of communal distress. It’s set in a futurescape scarred by climate change and additional pandemics, and centers a determined couple, Dylan and Melanie. Their futures circumscribed by circumstances beyond their control, they commit to each other with defiant ferocity. Their love persists beyond even Earth’s lifespan, with Melanie fading, over millennia, into a “soul globule” who still maintains her wife’s memory. Like all great books do, it stuck with me, affording the term “forever” added weight among the night’s buzzing proclamations of ever-after.
If you think about it, “L’chaim” is such a natural cheer in a reader’s mouth. “To life”: to challenging our inevitable impermanence with vibrant, animate art that breathes with and for us when we need it to. May I be so bold as to argue that this is why writers write in the first place. Each page reaches to make meaning in a world that often seems to resist it.
Herein, then, are 100+ reasons to celebrate. There are instances of spiritual searching in the body, mind, and spirit feature; the debut fiction feature elevates nascent voices that we’ll crave more from in years to come. The LGBTQ+ feature reflects authentic love in its manifold forms. Each title is its own reason to rejoice, to raise a glass and proudly say “to life!”
Sincerely,
Michelle Anne Schingler
Editor in Chief
mschingler@forewordreviews.com
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Michelle Anne Schingler
