A Letter from the Editor

Dear Reader,

We had a lot of really big plans for this year.

Suffice it to say that the current state of Cream City Review can't represent all those plans brought to fruition. For several years, we had been quietly, diligently preparing to expand CCR's operations: to be more directly engaged in our Milwaukee and Midwest communities, to provide more support to our contributors, and to give greater resources and recognition to our staff for the hard work we've put in for so long. What had to happen instead was a downsizing of operations, owing to both external factors that any of our readers in 2020 can guess as well as a host of behind- the-scenes changes we had equally little control over. Our staff has been required to take on greater work for less compensation this year, but this was also work we were often happy to perform to continue CCR's mission. What has broken our hearts more is our inability to engage with our community on the ground, outside the bounds of our two issues this year.

Still, for those of us who have labored through the pandemic to produce 44.2, the work you're about to read represents a series of bright spots in our year. We have long been astounded by and grateful for the high quality of writing submitted to us. This issue includes work that allowed us to stay engaged with our present surroundings without flinching, whether they were the unchanging interiors of one-bedroom apartments or the seas of masked Milwaukeeans marching miles of city streets every day. You will also find writing that allowed us escape, that pulled us out of our own heads to connect with our contributors and their worlds, however distant we may have felt from each other.

There's no way to faithfully express this sentiment without sounding saccharine: you writers and readers make our community real, even when the systems around us fail. You keep us connected by asking CCR to provide your work a home. We wanted to build all y'all a home that was so much bigger. If we can't build as much as we'd like, the least we can do is continue providing you a place to connect, too.

We hope you take as much solace and joy and catharsis from reading this issue as we took from building it. Thank you, again, to all our contributors, readers, prize judges, and staff who have made 44.2—and every issue of CCR—possible. And just like any good home, we hope this issue can provide you what you need when you most need it.