Letter by Nancy Campbell
Dear Sigrún—
I should be with you in Reykjavík, where tonight there’s an opening party for an exhibition at the National Library of Iceland. What an irony that JAÐARLÖND (“Borderlands”) is about cross-border communication. Instead I’m locked down in Oxford.
Letter by Julia Zarankin
Dear Universe,
You’ve been wondering about my life, about my routine, about how I’ve been spending my days. You mentioned Annie Dillard’s famous words, ‘how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives,’ and it makes me shudder. These days have yielded so very little and so very much.
Letter by Rachael Smart
Dear Jon,
I’m writing from my temporary office at the ping-pong table. In these strange capsules we call days, a ping-pong table isn’t as redundant as it might sound for a work base. When the death tolls spike and the gravity of other people’s loss presses at my chest, so that it’s difficult to speak during video calls, I find the blueliness of the table brackish and soothing.
Letter by Aislinn Hunter
Hey You,
How goes your self-isolation? Is it bad where you are?
Sometimes now, when I walk on the trails near my home and meet another hiker, one or the other of us will back into a trough of fern to awkwardly pretend social distancing is normal, and I’ll ask ‘So how’s your pandemic going?’
Letter by Jody Kennedy
Dear Billy,
I think you’d probably like the South of France in spring when everything is still fresh and new (the almond trees are the first to bloom), before the summer heat (especially in late afternoon) brings the cicada’s incessant poo-tee-weet (about mid-June), dries the grass to brittle stalk, turns the lavender fields a deep violet, and makes the Mediterranean Sea warm enough to finally comfortably swim in.
Letter by Haisu Huang
Dear Comrade Ma and Ba,
Last time I wrote you I eloped to America to marry my wife. You replied with silence. I thought we’d talk about it when I visited you in the summer.
Letter by Ziggy Zezsyazeoviennazabrizkie
Marcy,
I know we have WhatsApp and you’re always online on Facebook, but I think I should do this with a letter – hand written. Gosh, can you believe how archaic? But I need you to know how much I need you to know, and how difficult this is for me. Among other things.
Letter by Xu Xi
Dear Jon,
How odd that I should write you on my “corporate” letterhead. There were several correspondents from Indonesia (the country of my former nationality) in the most recent issue of The Letters Page to land on my desk.
Letter by Jon McGregor
Dear Readers,
I have a confession to make. I am not a good correspondent. There are beautiful handwritten letters on my desk to which I have not replied, and ancient emails in my inbox still marked as unread.
Letter by Farida Susanty
Dear Ziggy,
I hope this letter finds you well. A week has passed since our first meeting in London, but I still think about the event that we ran away from, the London Book Fair.
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