We are excited to present to you Other People Literary Magazine's sixth collection, Liminal! It is an honor to showcase more phenomenal literary and visual arts from our fellow UCSD students.
Like many issues before, we opened submissions without a theme in mind, allowing our selected pieces to reveal a common characteristic in their synergy. However, as we considered the links between each piece, we instead found ourselves drawn to the character of our submissions, where their indefinite truths explored and mirrored liminality.
Liminality encapsulates the in-between states of our everyday life, as we traverse periods of space and time to transition into something new. In this issue, artists explore their college years, a passage between childhood and adulthood; relationships, a blurring of boundaries between human beings; grief, a journey to accept the threshold between life and death; and so much more. In our arrangement, our creators’ works parallel each other as they move from the concrete and familiar to the bizarre and abstract, and back again. They challenge the nebulous nature of life, experimenting with blurriness to produce their own versions of clarity.
With this new issue, let us celebrate the “in-betweens” of new adulthood, delving into the liminal period of growing up. Let us make sense of the world that challenges definition, and its false sense of linearity. And let us brave the times that speak only of the unknown, wringing meaning from the stories we cradle in our memories.
The finished issue you see now is the product of the time, energy, and passion of our incredibly talented Other People team, as well as all of the creators we have had the privilege of collaborating with to explore the diversity of the human experience. We are grateful for everyone who has helped make this magazine possible. We truly cherish this opportunity to continue our mission to voice what is not heard, and show what is not seen. And as always, we thank our dear readers for passing the threshold to join this wonderful community, as we navigate our own liminal realities.
—Nina Gerardi, Zoe Wong, & Olivia Hwang
Other People Co-Editors-in-Chief and Head Editor