Editor's Letter

The Iris team explored what grounds them, searching for balance and stillness in a world that can often feel as if it has been turned upside down. 

We asked our writers to grapple with the idea of origins and beginnings.

In this issue, called Hauntings, I’ve asked our writers to consider what haunts them and why?

What story will I write, and who might tell mine? 

What a fickle force change is! It sweeps you up in its waves, and before you know you’re moving, the sands shift, your feet lightly landing on different shores. 

She feels an unsettling rumbling in her chest before she feels the tremor beneath her feet. She opens her face to the sky, which is now thick with billowing plumes of pearly smoke.

Our issue opens with Cheyenne Butler’s piece “What Happens in Vegas Should Stay in Vegas,” when the thin veil of adoration is trespassed.

This issue, we are telling the "Story of Iris," which is to say we are telling the story of the writers behind Iris. We paired our writers together to write pieces about each other, for sometimes the truest reflection of ourselves is the one refracted through someone else’s eye. 

Dear Beloved Reader, 

I am no stranger to the Unexpected. In fact, we are now old friends, but we weren’t always so friendly.