Editor's Letter

Every year on my birthday, I write a letter addressed to myself a year from now. I click send (god bless the internet and pre-scheduled emails) and the next birthday, in reading all that I wished for myself, I am renewed with hope and visions of futurity—a gift from the past.

In the fifth grade, as leaves cascaded down into a shriveled crisp and as the autumnal air descended upon us, I begged my mother to be Little Red Riding Hood for Halloween.

Dear beloved reader,

Close your eyes.

Inhale. Exhale.

How do you imagine blindness? 

Dear Beloved Reader,

I have a confession to make. 

It’s a secret that I’ve been quietly harboring since high school graduation. 

I was a band kid. 

Whenever something ends, there’s an instinctual drive to seize any last opportunities and make whatever last minute proclamations you can before it’s fully over.

I, like a lot of people, was taught from a young age never to talk about money.

April has begun. The seams of March have ripped apart, and as I write this the temperatures have climbed all the way into the low 80s. Even individually, things are picking up after a March slump. I j

When I took on the position of Editor here at Iris, I felt very hesitant to use phrases like “editorial vision” when referring to my goals for the magazine.

As anyone who’s turned on the TV or opened twitter in the past 6 months knows, “gender” is the new buzzword, the new culture war.

Compared to the fall, the spring season carries with it a palpable shift in tone. Especially speaking as a fourth-year student here at UVA, I haven’t been able to go a single week without suddenly being ambushed by a wave of “it’s almost over.”