Editor's Note

I would like to begin this note by thanking the individuals who made publishing Each to Each possible. Thank you, Mr. Lloyd, for allowing us to invade your classroom every Friday to plan the layout of this magazine, edit submissions, and discuss the craft of writing. Your support and encouragement have been invaluable. Thank you, Deion Nguyen and Kaitlyn Vo, for processing and examining every submission along with me. And finally, thank you to all of the writers who graciously submitted a short story or a poem to the magazine. Every piece we read demonstrated an idiosyncratic perspective on the experience of youth and otherhood.

It took us perhaps longer than usual to settle on a name for the magazine’s inaugural issue. Initially, we decided on “Crossroads.” Inspired by Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” the potential title did seem to encapsulate the awareness of possibility many people our age alternately embrace and shrink away from. But it didn’t quite fit the purpose of our magazine. We wanted to demonstrate the diversity of the teen experience, not the uncertainty inherent to being young. A few other titles were contemplated: “Travelers” (too broad), “Impulse” (too direct), and “Elastic House” (nonsensical) among them.

Ultimately, we arrived at the title of our magazine by accident. Flipping through a literary anthology in the library one day, I came upon an untitled poem by William Wordsworth now reproduced at the front of our magazine. Put simply, the poem argues for the necessity of preserving, in the psyche of an adult, the vision and the enthusiasm of a child.

The poem's last two lines "And I could wish my days to be / Bound each to each by natural piety” remained in my mind for days afterward. The reason for my fascination with those lines soon became clear: “Each to each” was the perfect candidate for our publication’s title. We intended this magazine to be a collection of thematically related, but fundamentally unique, representations of the teen experience. A visually symmetrical statement, the quote manages to simultaneously contain the sensations of connection and separation. At our next meeting, it was declared the definitive title of the magazine.

No two pieces featured in our magazine share identical interests or preoccupations. Deion Nguyen’s “The Monster of the West,” a hybrid sci-fi/fantasy story about a man suddenly assaulted while waiting for an unnamed woman, explores feelings of isolation and alienation through a genre lens. Written from the perspective of a teenager, Cadence Johnson’s “It’s a Long Story” is a touching, imagery-saturated story about the enduring power of friendship. Sophia Duong’s “A Gem Under the Moonlight” written in the voice of a young boy is a literary demonstration of the startling capacity of children for remorse and greed. Piercing and cynical, Keanu Perez’s “Makin Money Means Makin’ Trouble” illustrates how an individual’s environment can become a destructive presence in his life. Separating these short stories is “CPR Class” by Hannah Park. Inspired by a real-life experience, the poem condenses a complex moral struggle into a single, clearly defined moment.

Also included in the magazine are our “Found Poetry” and “Observatories” sections. All the poems included in the “Found Poetry” section were derived from an excerpt taken from Mrs. Dalloway. In Virginia Woolf’s almost cinematic scene, a group of passersby watch and comment on a plane writing a message in the sky.

The longer they spent analyzing the message, the more varied their personal interpretations became. Just as Woolf’s onlookers processed the plane’s message in radically different ways, the contributors to this section of the magazine each had meaningful individual responses to the excerpt. The collection of poems they Chelsea Grack, Deion Nguyen, and Margaret Wang produced is eclectic and beautiful.

We developed the “Observatories” section from a group writing activity completed during an editorial meeting. As a warm-up, I asked everyone to generate a short observatory a descriptive piece of writing about an object or scene being actively observed. Each person made distinctive creative choices: the objects they selected, the details they isolated, and the narration they incorporated all were reflective of some element of their personalities or literary voices. The power of perspective was demonstrated, once again. While assembling the magazine, we found it impossible to exclude the writing we did together that day from our publication

Ending the magazine are testimonials from members of the Creative Writing Club. Reflections on the club’s creation of a unique opportunity for students to channel their creative energy into writing experimental prose and poetry are featured, as are comments on the literary community we’ve created on campus.

As you flip through the magazine, I hope you identify perspectives that resonate, reaffirm, or recharge your own.

Enjoy,

Nicole Chu