“Beacon” by Emily Egna
Dear Readers,
“Shards of Reality,” or Volume 8 of KLIO, is here!
Last year, the KLIO staff decided to highlight the interconnectedness of different voices, cultures, and mediums. They had two main focuses: translation and ekphrasis.
This year, after recognizing our collective desire to spend this semester highlighting the intermingling of the subconscious and reality, we announced our two main focuses: dreams and nightmares.
We have curated many different genres of literature such as poetry, nonfiction and fiction, and visual arts such as photography, graphic design, traditional art, and video. These pieces all work together under the umbrella of dreams and nightmares. Readers will be pleased to find haunting narratives and whimsical visuals throughout our journal. We invite readers into the dreamscape and encourage them to let their imaginations run wild. Anything is possible when looking through these shards of reality.
The submissions from each category come together to tell a variety of different stories from a variety of different perspectives. Our theme “Dreams and Nightmares” allowed us to receive a diverse collection of submissions in which identity, content, and medium intersect. In more ways than one, the pieces featured in Volume 8 of KLIO bring us into many alternate realities.
The 2024 staff of KLIO is beyond excited about the quality of submissions we received this year, and we would like to thank all of the contributors who made this volume possible. We are so grateful to get to showcase your brilliant works and we would like to encourage you to continue submitting to both KLIO and our sister journal Kalliope in the future.
Special thank you to Emily Egna whose piece “Beacon” is featured on the cover of this year’s volume of KLIO. We thought the piece perfectly represented the aura of our journal this year and really prepares the reader’s mindset for what is to be expected within this collection.
I would also like to thank my fellow peers who worked alongside me to create Volume 8 of KLIO. I truly appreciate all the hard work that has been put in this semester, and I am extremely proud of what we produced together. Lastly, thank you to our faculty advisor Bradley Markle who guided us throughout this semester. For many of us, this was our first time working on a literary journal, and he did a great job of guiding our experience.
Without further preamble, we are proud to present Volume 8 of KLIO: “Shards of Reality.” We hope you enjoy these pieces as much as we do.
Alexis Berthold
Editor-in-Chief
KLIO 2024