Dear Reader,

One of my favorite outliers is Pluto, the planet (or technically not a planet) I was enamored with in second grade. It did not seem fair that, because Pluto was on the fringes of the solar system, it was completely stripped of its title as a planet. In fact, I was so outraged that I wrote and presented a strongly worded report to the entertainment of my classmates and the bewilderment of my teacher. 

In the Fall 2025 Outlier issue, you won’t be reading poorly-spelled reports on planets. Instead, you will experience pieces of art and academia that invite readers to step out of the fray, into the periphery and look at the world in a new way. Work that explores political identity in the face of being a statistical anomaly, challenges of dealing with people who don’t understand the family dynamic, and an investigation into impostor syndrome while struggling to find your place in the community.  

In this issue, the fact that being on the edges of space, looking in, is cold is never discounted or discarded. Yet, what is also captured is the stark clarity of each planet’s color, lighted by the sun, so that the details are as crisp as frost on a window. 

Dear reader, we pray that all the voices in this collection accumulate into one phrase: you are not alone.

Happy reading,

Co-Editors in Chief 

Abby Steensland & Brystol Beatley ‘25