Anais Nin wasn't supposed to be writing letters in 1975. She had been recently diagnosed with cancer. But she received a letter from a young woman wandering Japan, she felt compelled to respond. Thirty years later, it surfaces for the first time in public. In this new year, may you reach out to those who have influenced your thinking. Perhaps you, too, will receive words in return.

In this essay on deleted pasts and new beginnings, Aine Greaney takes us around the world in an old composition notebook: the only one she brought with her when she emigrated to America. With the start of the new year just behind us, we find this piece more timely than ever, as we revisit filled pages from the past, and look toward the blank ones of the future.

In this micro-reflection, Mary Fratesi finds delicate words for the most difficult of experiences: watching a loved one in pain. While this piece began as a pairing of two images, which has a fluency of its own, Mary takes us beneath the tree, and between the lines.

What happens when it's not just you, the writer, who struggles with the screen, but your characters? In this lyric essay, Tonianne Bellomo walks us through the negotiations she makes with her characters. What does she do to bring them to life? She builds them paper homes. 

Publishing under a nom de plume, this rising novelist reflects on how writing the first draft of her erotic novella by hand led to all kinds of unforgettable feelings.

A letter from mother to son during World War II illustrates the tense and tender sides of war, and long-distance correspondence.

A writer reflects on his first experience with a journal, which happened to coincide with living away for the first time as well, at the age of 26.

A project that weaves together generations, experiences, and handwritten expressions. 

Is the notebook half-empty or half-full? In this essay, Joyce Chen sets out to test and trust her hand, a routine tethered to time, with the hopes of avoiding the pitfalls of resolutions by resolving to reflect. Are you up for the screen test?

For author Karan Mahajan, handwriting is a necessity, a fact almost. He writes every first draft by hand, and while he encourages everyone to as well, he doesn't care if you do. But we do, so read this interview and hear his fearless take on how handwriting cancels self-criticism, as well as helps you avoid getting needlessly attached to language and doubling backward into revision before a story is complete.