40 Stories

This book ushers you into many worlds, all of them our world. It is full of voices, sounds, and people.
Stay with them, and they will stay with you.
The stories here represent eight tenths of a year. A year that kept slipping, yet also kept giving. Their writers gave them freely, and we do, too.
Like all stories, they work in a thousand ways. Some lull, some lure. Some pinch, some stretch.
Some are like a thicket, some a formal garden; others seem like valleys slick with rain. All replenish and reward.
They reveal, too:
That we want to be right, but we need to want.
That we’re scared and thrilled when we recognize ourselves in others. That bruising up against rules, measuring ourselves against them and despite them, is what we do as a people, what we share and need to share.
That cynicism is dead and ambiguity is anything but. That language is alive and so are we.
Thanks to you for writing them and for reading them.