Editor’s Note
Words By Dani Hedlund, Art By Brian Demers
Dear lovely reader,
A year ago, my editors and I sat in our local coffee shop and dreamed up a different kind of literary journal. Drunk on our own daring, we fantasized about everything this collection would hold: gorgeous, heart-wrenching literary fiction, fearless poetry and creative nonfiction. In failed attempts to whisper, we grew more adventurous: genre work, horror, fantasy, hell, throw some hard sci-fi in there. And a comic! A comic? Yes, a comic! Some stunning example of how graphic stories can be just as challenging as any piece of traditional literature.
A year ago, we dreamed this new imprint out of the ether, and a year ago, it felt like just that: a dream, some fantasy we’d wake up from at any second. Something impossible, intangible.
But it’s not. You’re holding it in your hands right now.
This collection, this gorgeous combination of art and literature, spans the entire spectrum of boundary-pushing work, from traditional literary fiction to the weird stuff, the stories too strange to find a home anywhere else.
Although I am deeply proud of F(r)iction #1 and #2, we were still growing, still adapting to our new mission. Like with most crazy dreams, it took time to convince the world to take a chance on us. But every day, we pulled more people in. We found kindred souls out there, men and women who believed that great stories could be found in the strangest of places. We found readers who were willing to give genre stories and comics a chance. We found writers who were ready to throw traditional standards out the window, to write fabulist works, genre-bending tales, stories that tested the limits of literature with every word.
In the collection you now hold, that mission is fully realized. From the written content to the downright beautiful artwork, this issue is quite literally a dream come true…and we couldn’t have done it without you.
So thank you, dear reader. Thank you for taking a chance on F(r)iction, for opening yourself up to weird stories, for shrugging off convention and letting the dream take hold of you. We hope it never lets go.
Cheers,
D.M. Hedlund
