The first, “Daddy’s Girl,” by Carolyn Ellen Hogan, dramatizes an embarrassing yet poignant moment between father and daughter, an emotional threshold in the process of growing up.  You will be enthralled by this piece, even if you are not a father or a daughter.

“The Church of Dead Girls,” by Anna March, brings home a topic that, because of saturation media coverage, has left much of society numb, but March’s skillful treatment restores the issue’s reality so powerfully that parts of the essay are painful to read.  And yet we must read this evocative piece, and cannot stop reading it, because there is so much at stake.

Diane Lefer’s “Facing Life” is just as evocative and singular in its investigation of a topic that touches few middle-class, comfortable readers, but which is nonetheless an issue of vital social concern.  Lefer examines, illuminates, and instructs, while never losing her personal touch with the reader.

Finally, “Crossing Borders,” by Sarah Rafael Garcia, presents a meditation on the issues of travel and personal relationships that is every bit as poetic in its structure as it is realistic in its details.  Her work is a highly involving metaphor for the borders all of us must cross in our exterior and interior lives.

I know that you will find all four of these pieces engaging and extraordinarily meaningful.  Enjoy!