As Creative Advisor to Longridge Review, I’m lucky to play a small role in the construction of a new creative nonfiction market. With Issue 5, LR places diverse childhood tales alongside arresting images. The result is an issue that speaks as one voice. In the words of Founding Editor Elizabeth Damewood Gaucher:
This issue is really heavy. There is recounting of a lot of trauma.
But this is part of our mission, I believe. To bring forth how serious childhood is to who we become. To offer empathy and compassion for adults who are still trying to find themselves whole after harm they suffered at a tender age. Absolutely, sometimes the formative event is love or humor. But often, it is not.
Sometimes the harm is callous disregard. Sometimes it is violent assault. Sometimes it is the betrayal of a friend. Sometimes, it is a parent’s love growing mysteriously cold.
And yet….each of these writers still seems to carry a small, unextinguished light. The search for resolution and healing is much of what these essays have in common.
Rather than hoping you will “enjoy,” I hope you will do what Elizabeth suggests and read with time and care. We all should do just that when listening to each other’s aching stories.
Suzanne Farrell Smith 