Letters Now Sent, Volume 1: Book Launch July 2025

In the words of Kate Bowler, “It’s not every day that you see it, but sometimes beauty sneaks up on you with a tenderness, a sweetness, so lovely it hurts.” (Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day, page 93).

This line captures how I feel about the contributors’ submissions to Letters Now Sent, Volume 1. Their words are beautiful. They sneak up on you with a tenderness, a sweetness, and an authenticity so lovely, it hurts.

This has been a grand experiment—an open invitation to friends and their friends and their friends (and so on) to write letters with no promise other than to be heard. It takes a lot of courage to enter into some of our stories. It takes even more courage to write a public, published letter. I am in awe of, and have the highest respect for, the letter writers. These letters are unfiltered, heart-wrenching, lovely. They show how there are so many different ways of telling our stories and histories.

Some of these letters were written with wonder how they would land with the intended reader. Some were written with laughter echoing in the background. All were written with an honesty that asks nothing in return but to be received with care. What remains precious and personal communication between the writer and the intended reader are now cultural artifacts that offer us a rare window into familial worlds, where cross-cultural stories live side by side with grief, joy, playfulness, hurt, compassion, and love.

These letters do not contain the whole story from the writer and intended reader. But they do divulge significant parts of whole stories. These are parts of stories that we are invited to tenderly hold and learn from. We get close to people’s hearts through them. And in that proximity, we see that our humanity is not tidy or clear cut; it’s sweet and salty and spicy and at times really sour. It’s paradoxical.

It’s in this proximity that we may see more likeness than difference. And it’s in this proximity that we can learn to build more bridges when the world is building walls. We are reminded that storytelling is not only a way of remembering, but a way of connecting. And sometimes, just sometimes, it sneaks up on us with a beauty so lovely, it hurts.

I invite you to read their tender, sweet, and lovely words in Letters Now Sent, Volume 1.

Sincerely,

Megan C. Norton-Newbanks (Compiler of Letters Now Sent, Volume 1)