Maybe you watched PBS Kids when you were a child, and maybe you remember the rap from Arthur: “Having fun isn’t hard—when you’ve got a library card.” And maybe now, here, you find yourself thinking: I have a library card! Why am I not having more fun?
I think this quite a lot, which is why I’m so excited about the Literary Issue—it feels like a remedy for all the fun I haven’t been having in libraries lately. “Who reads for fun anymore?” Today, the answer is you.
Many of these pieces are about summers, literal vacations, or less traditional departures from normal life. There are wedding dress fittings and tense adoptions, family feuds and almostdrownings.
I think these pieces offer the best of what reading is—a departure, but one that lingers with you once you’ve returned and gets you through the last couple weeks of being begrudgingly not on vacation. I hope you take a second to step into these spaces, to let them linger with you, and to have fun.
Anxiously,
Libbie Katsev
Literary Issue Special Editor