Dear Reader,
Thank you for picking up our latest issue of Nightingale & Sparrow Literary Magazine! With summer heat surrounding us, and hints of autumn creeping in, we’re grateful to embrace this season’s theme, bonfire.
Whether through pop culture references or your own experiences, you surely have a fiery image come to mind when you hear this issue’s title. I know I certainly did! Unsurprisingly, our incredible contributors brought just this life, alongside so many nuanced interpretations of the theme.
For this theme, we gave submitters the following prompt: “The crackling wood and the warmth of the flames fill the night air. We sit around at the beach, or maybe the first football game of the season, watching the embers glow in the darkness as the flames lick the sky. Send us work that speaks to the primal allure of the bonfire or reflects on the tales passed down through this timeless gathering.”
From Mahaila Smith’s “Wildfire” and Emma Wells’s “ Autumn Camp” to Pushpanjali Kumari’s “The God in the Hearth” and Kaitlyn Dempsey’s “Fiery Times,” you’ll feel theflames and smell the smoke as you page through this issue.
As always, thank you to the N&S staff, submitters and contributors, readers, and other supporters who make this issue and all we do possible.
Take a seat around the bonfire, and enjoy.
Juliette Sebock
Editor-in-Chief, Nightingale & Sparrow
