Sincere attention has always been my way into the world. As a writer, it’s how I enter a new project—letting the light catch all the facets of my subject till focus becomes devotion. It is both curiosity and faith; a willingness to be changed by what is unfamiliar; a deliberate refusal to flatten complexity into comfort.
As the editor-in-chief of Inscape, I approach the work of others with the same care. To pay this kind of attention is to recognize that every voice, every brushstroke, every line matters—and in doing so, to cultivate the possibility of connection, understanding, and hope.
Our staff, collectively, is dedicated to meeting all work entrusted to us with that kind of attentiveness. Our role in the world demands that we hold your poems, essays, short stories, and artwork long enough to hear what they ask of us—to feel their rhythms and textures, and to honor the choices behind them.
What literature offers, gently but insistently, is the possibility of connection through that attention. In the process, love becomes less an assertion and more a practice. Hope for our communities and futures takes real shape—becomes what Emily Dickinson called, “the thing with feathers.”
The world today is so eager to tell us who we should be afraid of, which stories belong, and which beliefs fit neatly into acceptable forms. There is something radical, then, about settling into another person’s interiority and saying, I will stay. I will listen. I believe this matters.
Inscape exists in that radical space at a rare intersection between creation and belief—between artistic risk and spiritual openness. This issue holds work from writers and artists across diverse backgrounds, traditions, and approaches, who stand at that intersection to witness and weave powerful, important stories. Some arrive in stillness, others on fire. Some question, some affirm, and some do both in the same breath. None seek to prove anything. They simply offer. And it is the offering that moves me—not because it demands agreement, but because it invites faith and human connection that transcends social, religious, and cultural barriers.
To write is an act of love. To publish, an act of witness. To read, a willingness to say, I am here with you, even briefly. That is where faith lives for me lately: not in what we claim with certainty, but in what we risk giving our attention to. In believing the world is still worth seeing clearly. In trusting that beauty—even fractured, even unresolved—is still present, waiting to be recognized.
This issue is small, beautiful, and unafraid. It belongs to those who hunger for the world in all its particularity: its unspectacular afternoons, its ache and astonishment, its unanswered prayers and quiet reconciliations. Its rooms full of breath. Its people—every one of us—trying to make sense of each other.
We hope you will read slowly—that you will read like you believe something might change you. Read the way one might step into sanctuary—not to escape this stupidly gorgeous world, but to re-enter it, afterward, with attentive love.
Sincerely,
Paige Winegar Fetzer
Editor-in-Chief
