When I was a little girl, I read Something Wicked This Way Comes by Roy Bradbury. Ever since then, I have been unable to escape the power of words, of story. Many readers hove hod the fully immersive experience of reading a good story-where you ore so entranced by the words that you ore transported in time and place and, for a little while, inhabit the tole you ore reading. An avid reader, I often felt this out of body experience, but Bradbury gave me something even greater. When Jim Nightshade and William Holloway went running through the dark October streets toward the town library, I was not only running alongside them, I felt I already hod in the post. I was given a memory, and it is more vivid lo me today than "real" memories from that some time.

What is a "real" memory? I con still feel the cool autumn air rushing post me as I run through the rustling leaves that blush the air with their bitter scent of decoy. Is this not a real memory?

The power of writing, of words crafted in some narrative, poetic, or other structural form, is incornotionol in nature. Images, ideas, and feelings ore embodied and brought lo life through words that become tangible. Writing presents and crystallizes particular aspects of the embodied world we inhabit, and in doing so, draws the reader into on experience in a new and powerful way. I hove seen the illustrated man, lasted the golden apples of the sun, and traveled lo planets out-side our solar system all while sitting on a couch in my living room. What's more, I hove learned about people groups outside of my immediate culture, I have had my beliefs shaken and refortified, and I have learned to value the basic dust from which we were made as something more complicated and intricate than I could ever hope to create. In writing-in any creative act-we image our God, who spoke each minute detail of the world into existence, and in toking time lo croft story out of words, we affirm the inherent value of embodied life that Christ so beautifully redeemed through the Incarnation. If he sow our embodied existence as worthwhile, so ought we.

The poems, narratives, essays, and review published in this Fall issue of The Pub demonstrate respect and passion for human existence and seek, through words, to better understand our intricacies, our brokenness, and our hope for redemption. As you read, I challenge you to be fully present both physically and mentally. Your perceptions about immigration, selflessness, and American ideals of beauty will be challenged, and I hope your reading and subsequent discussion of these and other topics will be both edifying and worshipful. May the following words draw you in as they did me, embodying little pieces of our world and begging you to interact with the images and ideas presented as if with a tangible reality before you.

Debbie Knubley

Editor-in-Chief