I have recently spent a lot of time thinking about the kind of literature I am drawn to and why. I tend to be a re-reader. I like to return to a text after years have passed and read it again with different eyes. I have revisited numerous stories from my childhood reading with adult eyes and new appreciation. I have read my favorite short stories countless times. There are also the stories that haunt me; these are stories I have only read once, and probably will not return to because they have disturbed me, caused me too much grief, been all too familiar, but have stayed with me all the same. For me, powerful writing makes me feel something strongly.

“Deep Waters” is the kind of story that you can, and should, return to a few times. Each time I read it, I find a new detail I did not notice before. The subtlety of the carefully selected words allows for various interpretations of those details. It is a story that will stay with you.

“The Full Circle of Love” is also a story where the layering of details will invite me to return again and again. And each time, I feel the gravity of a mother’s grief even more intensely.

“Girls Who Break Hearts” is straightforward, make-you-think-of-all-the-girls-from-high-school honesty presented in a string of lovely images. It’s the kind of story I find myself nodding my head to and smirking a little too often.

“The Townsfolk in Winter” rounds out the selections in this edition with a solemn scene, again, inviting various interpretations and good dialogue.

I hope that these selections invite you to return to them for two or more readings and impress upon you the same emotions the fiction editors felt while considering them.

Enjoy,
Elizabeth De Arcos
Senior Fiction Editor
The Citron Review