Dear readers,

Upon writing this note, it’s currently a gray day, the last in April. Like communities across the globe, COVID-19 has forced myself and my fellow Philadelphians to shelter in place for over a month. The choice to leave the house for a short walk or a trip to the grocery store feels like both a blessing and a curse — the joy in feeling the sun or the rain on one’s skin coupled with the fear and anxiety of not knowing whether or not the air we breathe or the things we touch could make us sick, or worse.

Others around us, in Philadelphia and across the world, do not have this same choice. Some are essential workers, leaving the comfort and safety of home to tackle this deadly disease head-on or to keep our communities functioning, stocking our groceries, picking up our trash, or manufacturing our next roll of precious toilet paper. Some are faced with the reality of not being able to social distance because they are confined to cells that do not allow for six feet between occupants. Others cannot #stayhome because they did not have a house to begin with. 

This situation is not easy for anyone. It’s a shared experience while also being radically different from one population, one community, to the next. 

It is our great hope that come fall, when we plan to release our first issue of Paper Dragon, we will all be experiencing the world a little differently. Those of us who can will be back at work and school. Those of us who can’t will at least be back on our feet. We hope our Drexel University campus is once again a hub of intellectual activity — that we can celebrate this inaugural release of our MFA program’s literary journal, along with the bright faces of our new classmates in the second cohort.

However, the reality is that attaining this hope remains uncertain. But wherever we end up — as individuals, as a community, as a whole society — we know there is one thing that is certain, one thing that we wish to document closely in our first issue. That is through hardship, through sacrifice, through uncertainty, it’s human nature to rise up, to band together, to help each other. These are the stories we wish to highlight in our first issue with a theme of “R&R – Recovery & Resilience,”  because even though some of us are at home with much less on our plate in terms of the rigors of daily life, we are not relaxing. We are surviving. We are lifting up those around us. And those who need lifting are showcasing their resiliency, the fortitude of the human spirit to persevere through hardship.

Tell us your stories of triumph now, and let’s celebrate R&R this fall with our difficulties hopefully behind us.

Sincerely,
Beth Ann Downey
William Vargo
Daniel Horn
Paper Dragon Managerial Editors