Much has happened since our inaugural issue was published last February. Our second issue is coming out in the midst of the COVID-19 global pandemic and widespread protests against racism and police violence. As proven before in times of crisis, Wilder's words and humanistic/philosophical vision continue to inspire and give hope. In the midst of the Great Depression, Wilder's novel Heaven's My Destination (1935) used comedy to entertain its American readers as it prompted them to deeper self-reflection; his two full-length plays, Our Town (1938) and The Skin of Our Teeth (1942), offered their audiences respectively profound appreciation of the smallest moments and an unwavering faith in our ability to survive World War II. During another crisis, at the memorial service for victims of the 9/11 attacks, the British Prime Minister Tony Blair quoted Wilder's visionary lines ending his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927): “There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”As we remain sheltered-in-place due to the pandemic, access to Wilder's works has become easier. In May the Wilder Family and HarperCollins's legendary audio imprint Caedmon released five out of eight of Wilder's novels as digital audiobooks. Now you can listen to The Bridge of San Luis Rey, The Cabala, Heaven's My Destination, The Ides of March, and The Woman of Andros, the latter four being available in audio for the first time. Later this year Caedmon will publish the remaining two novels, The Eighth Day and Theophilus North, as audiobooks. To keep Wilder's theater audiences engaged when unable to attend actual productions, Thornton Wilder Society board member Shoshana Greenberg has organized two Zoom play readings of The Skin of Our Teeth (May) and The Matchmaker (July). And in this issue of Thornton Wilder Journal, we are bringing you a selection of new Wilder criticism. The articles range from Nancy Bunge's analysis of how Friedrich Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy explains the lasting popularity of Wilder's classic Our Town, to Ann Caldwell's theorizing about the prominence of the American Southwest as Wilder's “creative and spiritual home,” to Jamall A. Calloway's interdisciplinary probing of the relevance Social Gospel ethics may have to Our Town, to Ashley Raven's discussion of how to teach Our Town through a dramaturgical lens, and Wesley Longacre's summary of Wilder scholarship since 2016. For those who long for the reopening of theaters, we include five reviews of notable 2019 productions of Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, and a rare staging of The Seven Deadly Sins, a collection of Wilder's late one-acts, that took place at Suffolk University in Boston, Massachusetts.Besides the mixture of critical essays and significant production reviews, in this issue we introduce three kinds of material we hope to feature going forward: essays on teaching (Raven), biographical essays (Caldwell), and an annual review of Wilder scholarship and criticism (Longacre). We also draw your attention in Caldwell's essay to references to hard-to-locate articles and an interview with Wilder that was previously unknown. In future issues we plan to include previously unpublished Wilder letters and other primary documents as well as obscure secondary materials.Although many will remember 2020 for the global pandemic and social unrest, in the annals of Wilder Studies, in truly Wilderian style, this year will mark significant accomplishments and contributions to the continuing vitality of Wilder's artistic legacy in the twenty-first century. We congratulate Tappan Wilder on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his becoming Wilder's literary executor. It has also been twenty years since the founding of the Thornton Wilder Society, and this issue completes the first year of the Thornton Wilder Journal. We hope you will help us celebrate these important milestones by reading and contributing to our journal and joining the Society. We look forward to hearing your voices, reading your submissions, and continuing the conversation on all things Wilder.