Welcome to Issue #26! We tried something new for us at NFFR with an open submission issue where we had Submittable conceal the author names and we asked writers to keep identifying information from their entries. We didn’t see the names until we had already clicked Accept or Decline and sent off the emails. It was a pleasant surprise to see both names new and familiar to us! We accepted work from one writer born in Hungary and another born in Ukraine. On a personal note, I was happy to see the name of a teacher of mine from a few years ago at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. Gordon Mennenga is a great teacher in the art of the novel, and I was not aware he also wrote flash fiction. I’m glad he does!

Thanks to everyone who trusted us with their work this month. It was difficult to watch the events of the world unfold as we were reading this month, but it was also another reminder of the power of love. The power of creativity. The power of being alive. Good will always win out in the long run, but it’s all too frequent pairing with unnecessary loss is a sad reality to be sure.

Thanks to everyone who has allowed us to share this work with you now. We hope you enjoy it.

-Al Kratz March 2022