I used to live near a cemetery, where I would walk sometimes to get out of the house and clear my head. In the cemetery, I found a headstone for a woman named Lucy and her husband. Her husband’s death date was in the 1800’s, but Lucy’s death date was left blank. I realized I wanted to write my way into this mystery.

-Joshua Zeitler, “Anna No, Anna No,” Volume XXX, 2026

Tenth grade geometry class. A lesson on cubes wasn’t holding me; a couple of lines came into my head, I wrote them down. I looked at the board, looked at what I wrote—and spent the next three years of high school math class writing. My math grades suffered, but writing took hold and has never let go.

-Scott T. Hutchison, “Bowls of My Father’s Anger,” Volume XXX, 2026

I wrote my first book at nine years old—a story about my sister’s dog, Kazan. I have always had a pencil and paper in hand, always jotting down things that occur to me…words on paper—it’s who I am.

-Judith Mikesch-McKenzie, “Having Faith in the Speed of Light, “Volume XXX, 2026

Early on—probably around grade five. I went to a parochial school and we were given a poetry writing assignment. The next day, there were some VIP visitors making the rounds of the classroom, and I was asked to read my poem for our guests. It was a sing-song piece of work, with rhyming end-words chosen simply because they rhymed (i.e., hill/ill), and the rules said a poem had to rhyme or it wasn’t a poem. Nonetheless, I was very serious about my poem and was mortified when the guests laughed. It was an early lesson in the art of humility, and I vowed to persist.

-T. Clear, “Here on Earth,” Volume XXX, 2026