This Is The Beginning

Dear reader, 

Art is resistance. You know this. But as we crafted Sanctuary’s eighteenth issue, the world tried to make us forget it. 

In the wake of our current administration, our team aimed to curate an issue in opposition to the world. Sanctuary has always stood as a reminder that artistic expectations are meant to change. Our magazine was founded in 2007 as a space for genre fiction, something not yet accepted in our classrooms. Now, eighteen years later, all genres exist in our literary ecosystem side by side. Sanctuary was built to be the antithesis to convention, to show another way forward. We want to once again serve as proof that the way things are run is never the only answer. 

In this issue, our team aims to live up to our name. We want to create a sanctuary for all pieces, all people, a reminder that safety can still exist if we create it. In the following pages, you will find stories of pregnancy and violence and rising Spam prices, all reimaginings of the existence we must live for now. But in this magazine, you can decide your own path. Turn it sideways, turn it upside down. Choose what is the end and what is the beginning. Remember that you have power, no matter who tries to take it away. 

I hope this issue reminds you that this is not the end of our future, but the mark of our way forward. Welcome to This Is Not The End. Or, This Is The Beginning. You can decide. 

With love, 

Sarah Ledet

Managing Editor

Sarah Ledet

Junior Managing Editor

Cheyenne Nicely

Head Poetry Editor

Ella Baker

Senior Prose Editor

Lindsay Hirschman

Junior Prose Editor

Sadie Leary

Head Visual Arts Editor

Katie Murray

Head PR Manager & Website Designer

Avery Atkins

Junior PR Manager

Sage Gillard

Budget Manager

Haley Seitz

Prose Winner

“Born Hungry” - Sydnie A. Howard -

“Born Hungry” cleverly intertwines and, in turn, compares the surreal with the political and the biblical, likening the primalism of misogynists to the invasiveness of aliens. Howard’s brief, yet precise scenes will sew you into her world and keep you there with her seamless transitions. Her allusions to early biblical lore is an iconic technique throughout her work, but is especially poignant in “Born Hungry.” This flash fiction piece expresses tonal humor that balances out the lifelike portrayal of strained relationships and emotions in the climate of twenty-first century America. Howard’s astute observations on the human condition are effortlessly reflected on the page.

Poetry Winner

“addition and subtraction” - Emi Harris -

“addition and subtraction,” is some sort of baptism—glittering, suggestive, and completely arresting. Its language aches with vivid immediacy, trapping your full attention from start to finish, and its images will haunt you long after you’ve stepped away. Emily Harris knows how to pull from the invisible corner of the human experience—the corner that only poetry can reflect. She wields her words with dangerous precision. You’ll find yourself in this poem: in the deer, the ferryman, the illusion, the red, the bones. Harris knows where you’re ending up, even if you don’t. It’s comforting. Let yourself be carried away.

Visual Art Winner

‘Self Portrait’ - Avianna Conklin -

‘Self Portrait’ expertly extracts the concept of the self portrait and heightens it into a dynamic and visually stimulating work of artistic craft. The attention of depth and contrast makes this piece breathe, allowing us to imagine the rise of the figure’s chest and the humanity of the face. Its textural landscape of charcoal creates a abstract space of the real and the imagined, bringing us into the environment of the figure. ‘Self Portrait’ looks beyond what the observation of the self is, and produces a visual masterpiece that holds us within its deep and hidden depths.

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The Candlewick Prize is awarded to a contributor from each genre whose piece strikes us, whose lines we return to and whose characters float behind us, specters of what we pulled from their lines.