Volume 14, Issue 2 (2026)

Dear Readers,

Artists create worlds that ask their audiences to stay a while, to sit down with themselves and feel. The mission of Gandy Dancer has always been to bring the individuality of our contributors’ reckonings together in concerted and harmonious assembly; our experiences are our own, but they do not exist alone. As editors, we invite you—our readers—to join in this collective, to reflect and imagine something beyond yourselves.

The creative nonfiction in this issue reminds us of the unexpected unity in our work and the experiences which it processes. Dee Dolce’s “20,” through a kind of scientific wonder, elicits the gentle binds which link us to each other and to the natural world, quietly witnessing each other’s changes through time: “the path we follow is stone smoothed by years of footsteps following each other to the summit, clear of leaves and moss. the fantasy of natural solitude is just that: a fantasy.” Dom Danielle’s poetic, dancing prose in “A List of Unseen Contradictions” illustrates, with great depth and consequence, the hidden questions of self which lurk beneath our surfaces, evoking the timid curiosity at how our truths will be received by others. She writes, “I’m a big fan of sonder,” imploring us as readers to dive into that uncanny awareness as we proceed through the distinct worlds of our contributors.

The unique quality of photography is that it captures moments which would otherwise disappear before us. Through her lens, Liliana Noemi encapsulates a world in “Shelves,” a room filled with life and memories that urges us to relish the details. It acts as a reminder of all of the small things that accumulate throughout our lives that make us who we are. Emma Dean-Stahl’s “Shadow Puppets,” combines photography with sketches in pencil to showcase the unusual, the distorted, and the ephemeral. The collages assembled by Elisabeth Small, featuring their own colorful melange of styles, mediums, and figures, echo the variety and vitality that distinguishes this issue.

Julia Gartley’s short story “Souvenirs from the Old Country” examines the memories, grievances, opinions, and distance the protagonist Mary has with her long-term friend, Della. In the end, Mary observes “that we spend our lives able to endlessly examine our memories, turning them over and over in our minds until we understand, usually much too late, what they actually are.” Sometimes just existing in a moment, we miss what is actually happening until it is already gone. In “Good People,” by Abby Stinar, the protagonist’s plan to break up with her girlfriend is complicated by finding a severely injured girl in the dumpster where she works. After leaving the girl, who happens to be named Love at the emergency room, the protagonist will be haunted by by Love, leaving us to wonder what love means, and what it means to be a good person.

Issue 14.2’s poetry contemplates what it means to remember, highlighting the struggle of living with memory and the fearful anticipation of creating more. Catie Prospero McGuire’s “Umbilical; Attached” considers navel piercing, motherhood, and her own mother. She can’t know her mother’s memories or her own future, all she can do is “wonder if she regrets it, / wonder if I will too.” In Ella Singer’s “December Elegy” the speaker reckons with heartache. Despite the painful, burning reminder of loss, the speaker ends with the affirmation: “Every day I ask myself if it is worth it— / this loving & losing & hurting / & every day I answer / yes.”

We hope you enjoy experiencing our contributors’ innermost thoughts and find your own meaning within them. You’ll notice the much longer Postscript section highlighting the work of founding, managing, production, and genre editors in a remembrance of all those who made Gandy Dancer what it is today. Though only one of us is graduating, this chapter, creating the journal, is coming to a close for all of us. Despite this, we don’t want this to seem like goodbye; we don’t think there’s such a thing as a goodbye when it comes to Gandy. We find comfort in knowing that there will always be a future here. To all future managing editors, contributors, and readers: we know the journal is in good hands with you. And to Rachel Hall, thank you for making all of this possible. The memories we have created because of you will be ones we look back on and smile.

Remember us well,

Nina Avallone-Serra, Sonia Horowitz, & Paige Loucks

Additional Note

Because I am retiring after this semester, this is my last issue as the Gandy Dancer faculty advisor. How I will miss working alongside Production Editor Allison Brown and the student editors each semester! This has been enriching and fun, and I’m grateful for the relationships—near and far—that grew from this work. When we started Gandy, I didn’t completely understand that a literary journal creates a community and a hub for that community. We creatives need community in a world that prefers facts and figures and the bottom line to creative expression. Much works against the making of art—our fears about global instability and environmental collapse, not to mention the mushroom cloud of AI—so community feels especially essential now.

Margaret Anderson, the founder of The Little Review, which ran from 1914 to 1929, said, “If I had a magazine I could spend my time filling it with the best conversations the world has to offer.” For the past fourteen years, I have loved the conversation here at Gandy. Many thanks to all the former editors, writers, artists, and their professors across the SUNY system for making that conversation so compelling. If you are new to the journal, I hope you’ll join in, add your voice to the vibrant mix.

To commemorate my final issue Allison suggested a larger Postscript section, featuring a collection of alumni writers, though we usually publish just one in each issue. We eventually landed on inviting former Gandy editors to submit work and encouraged them to address the theme of endings and beginnings, loosely interpreted. I’m delighted that so many former editors submitted work. It was a pleasure to read their words again—and I know you will enjoy these poems, essays, and stories, too. You will find here all manner of riches: deep understanding of human nature, curiosity about the past and a desire to understand the ways it lives on. In these writers’ love and knowledge of the natural world, there is hope for our imperiled planet. The best conversations. In total, there are twenty pieces in our Post Script folio. In order not to overwhelm the regular contributions, we publish most online exclusively.

I leave the journal in the good hands of Professors Emrys Donaldson and Lytton Smith. I know Gandy will flourish in their care. Much gratitude to the English department, Milne Library, the Office of Sponsored Research, the Parry family, and the college. This venture couldn’t have happened without your support.

Despite the name of our journal coming from old railroad slang, we decided early on in Gandy Dancer’s history that we shouldn’t lean too hard on railroad language. We didn’t want to be “that train journal,” as one former editor put it. We decided we would not talk about “the journey” or close a note to the readers with the phrase “All aboard!” So, I hope I can be forgiven for saying this at the end of my tenure: What an amazing ride!

–RH