When I began The Passed Note, it was because of a book of short stories. Specifically, it was because of a book of retold fairy tales, Rags & Bones, edited by Melissa Marr and Tim Pratt. Within were tales questioning the ways we’d always imagined classic narratives. Was Sleeping Beauty really a beauty, Neil Gaiman’s retelling of Sleeping Beauty asks, or was she the one keeping the palace asleep for all those years? What would we do, Kelley Armstrong asks, with a monkey’s paw in these modern times?
Short stories are important. They allow readers a brief time frame to step inside someone else’s life and narrative; they aid us in gaining perspectives we might never have otherwise. We have a fiction issue this winter because stories save lives. This February, we all need a little saving. Andre Dubas once wrote, “I love short stories because I believe they are the way we live. They are what our friends tell us, in their pain and joy, their passion and rage, their yearning and their cry against injustice.” All three of these stories collect that elation, but also the frustration that comes with being human.
Editor's Note