Editor's Note Jason Kyle Howard The years changed things; destroyed things; heaped things up—worries and bothers; here they were again," Virginia Woolf writes in e Years, the story of a family in London navigating the changes wrought by nearly sixty successive years of loss, family tensions, political strife, war, and heartache. True to life, some of the characters find [End Page 6] themselves encountering the same issues over and over again in subtle acts of eternal recurrence. Some are liberated, while others feel trapped, caught in one of time's wrinkles. The pandemic has sometimes made me feel that way. Time has stood curiously still. And then it feels as if we are moving in warp speed, with a velocity that is fast and jarring, before things slow again to a near standstill. Some days are mind-numbingly the same; others have offered a measure of variety. One of my constants, of course, has been reading, and I have found myself returning to some of my favorite authors, such as Woolf and James Baldwin, for stability and wisdom. I hope this issue of Appalachian Review can provide some of that same anchoring. "Market Forces," an excerpt from an upcoming novel by Mark Powell, examines the effects of ecoterrorism on an Appalachian town. Sheila R. Lamb's short story "The Spring" brims with mystery and is enchanting in every sense of the word. The two essays featured here—"Keats in Your Time of Pandemic" by Kathleen Driskell and "Where Have All the Safety Pins Gone?" by Angela Jackson-Brown—each manage a remarkable feat. Timely, rooted in our present moment, they are also enduring, carrying themes and meanings that are perpetual in nature. Likewise, poetry by Jason B. Crawford, Benjamin Cutler, Emry Trantham, John Q. Mars, Melva Sue Priddy, Laura Long, and Eileen Elizabeth offer exquisite moments of lyricism, grief, and beauty. We are proud to feature a new poem from Ansel Elkins, winner of the 2014 Yale Younger Poets Prize, who also reflects on her poetry and teaching in an insightful conversation. Jessie van Eerden, author of the forthcoming epistolary novel Call It Horses, explores the enduring resonance of the form in her craft essay "This Present Absence." Our current year has certainly changed and destroyed things. It has heaped things up, revealing disparities and [End Page 7] inequities that have long been ignored, that must be confronted and changed. We can make it, I am convinced, by being responsible in our everyday lives. By wearing our masks. By listening—by hearing and heeding the cries for justice. And by allowing the power of stories, to paraphrase Ansel Elkins, to expand our souls. [End Page 8] Copyright © 2020 Berea College