Editor’s Note: Issues 21 and 22

From the Editor’s Desk:

I’m releasing Issues 21 and 22 of Dreamers Magazine together, and it feels right to do so.

These two issues were shaped during very different moments for me. Issue 21 comes from a period of uncertainty and rebuilding—when things felt unsettled, nonlinear, and required more honesty and focus than expected. The work in that issue leans toward the uncanny, moving between the real and the imagined, holding space for unease, transformation, and quiet endurance. Alongside that, the haiku offer something grounding and precise, steadying the issue in their restraint.

Issue 22 reflects a shift. Something that had been weighing heavily finally resolved, and with that came a sense of return—to projects, to ideas, to a steadier way of moving forward. That reorientation runs quietly through the work, much of which centers on family and belonging: caregiving, love, memory, and loss. The 2026 Pen Parentis Fellowship winners and the 2025 Flash Contest winners speak to those themes in different ways, while our two feature nonfiction pieces—Motherhood in the Plague Year by Allison Bothley and Of Imagination All Compact by Eunice-Grace Domingo—approach family through uncertainty and change with clarity and care.

Taken together, these two issues sit in conversation with one another. They don’t resolve everything, but they make room—to notice, to reflect, and to keep going.

Thank you, as always, for reading and for supporting Dreamers. I’m grateful you’re here.

Kat McNichol
Editor-in-Chief
Dreamers