I'm so excited that Molly Gaudry, the author of We Take Me Apart, Desire: A Haunting, and the forthcoming Fit Into Me, is this year's Guest Selecting Editor. I've been such a fan of Molly ever since she was so nice as to welcome me into this literary community years ago. Her passion and kindness and concern for not only the written word, but for those behind those words is truly a treasure. Thank you, Molly.

As always and always, many thanks to the Wigleaf Crew who dedicated their time and thought to the 2021 Wigleaf Top 50, for if it wasn't for them and their love for very short fictions, this series wouldn't be here today. Thank you to our Associate Series Editors Elaine Chiew, Michelle Dove, and Anne Weisgerber, and thank you to our Readers Sudha Balagopal, Casey Hannan, Sydney Kim, Sean Lovelace, Alice Maglio, DW McKinney, Rainie Oet, Alex Perez, and Colleen Rothman.

And of course, more so than anything else, thank you Scott Garson, for creating such a lovely, lovely series here at Wigleaf.

Thank you, readers and writers and editors—thank you to the literary community.

We look to escape—we look to grasp reality—we laugh and we cry—we nod our heads or shake them and sigh—we share, we love, and we support each other. We try to make sense of it all. Over the past year, perhaps more than ever before, the form of very short fictions has played an immense role in allowing us to put our heads on each other's shoulders—to hug one another, to both empathize and sympathize. Out of dire necessity, creativity carried us into worlds upon worlds, from the microscopic to the macroscopic, a bit of light glowing from our palms, we traveled through time and space to say hi to each other with our imaginations and fascinations. Indeed, you all are magicians, and I can't thank you enough. Love.

Onward we go.

—shome dasgupta

Shome Dasgupta is the author of SPECTACLES, which is currently on pre-order from Word West and will be out in September.

Art on main page by Levin Garson.









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