Grief is inextricable from the human experience. It was made apparent in the past, when Benjamin Franklin famously said that ‘in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.’ It is made apparent in the present, when over a thousand people fit into St. Patrick’s Cathedral to send off late activist Cecelia Gentili. And, in the future, I hope many can explore these themes and feelings outside of first hand experience through Sosuke Natsukawa’s novel, “The Cat Who Saved Books”. Natsukawa spins a tale of a teenage boy mourning the loss of his bookshop-owning grandfather, and is suddenly swept up in an adventure of fantastical labyrinths and peculiar people by a talking orange tabby. Three labyrinths in total, each more complex than the last, challenges this boy and his classmate in ways they’ve never known, but ultimately reinvigorates his love for both the books in the shop and the memory of his grandfather. I think everyone should read this book because it is a reminder that there is love even in death. There is magic, even in life. The novel creates a comfortable and quiet place to rest, to unravel the idea of holding space for your grief while returning to the things you love dearly, and I think that is so important as we grieve so much loss and trauma over the last few years. To meet this book, to be validated in one's suffering while also affirming that there is power in the memory of the people you love, can be so affirming to someone who may otherwise have gone without. It is a story about a boy and a girl and a cat saving books, but it introduces the reader to the idea of saving themselves.

언어를 너무 좋아해요. That’s what I said anytime someone asked me why I chose to learn Korean. “I really like languages.” And even though it was true that I liked to learn new words and meet people to share them with, my proficiency could not even begin to explain the sentence, and the meaning that towered behind it. When I was much younger, I couldn’t quite describe what drew me to it, even with all the tools my native English had to offer. But recently I read a book that has allowed me to grasp the edges of the feeling. Called ‘The Ten Thousand Doors of January’, the young heroine January Scaller becomes thrust into a world of magic and wonder as she learns that she has a hereditary ability to access doors that lead to parallel worlds. It is a revelation both fantastical and bittersweet, as she often feels like she doesn’t fit into the world she was born in. I’m sure many can relate to this feeling of not fitting in, and I quickly found that one way to explore it was to look past the edges of my own experience and into others. What isn’t always understood is that language doesn’t exist on its own; it grows on the borders of a culture, being influenced by it as time goes on. And the time it took for me to fall into this lifelong hobby had an immense impact on my life. At first was a drop in the bucket. I had been dreaming of being in a place where English wasn't the language that spilled out of cafes and onto the street, and I finally got the chance to live it. I volunteered in a tiny town at an even tinier meditation retreat surrounded by green that stretched over the German street signs. By the time my work was over and I was on the flight home, I was thinking about where I should go next, once again wondering what it'd be like to speak a language in open air, instead of on a screen. Days bled into nights of pouring over well lit computer screens, until I was granted another amazing opportunity, this one even further than the last. Before I knew it, I was on a small island in the Yellow Sea, playing games with children in English and switching to Korean if they misbehaved. Two years sprinted by in a haze of seasons, seas, and fine dust. Then I got on another plane home, already missing the hangul and ahjummas asking me where I was from. I’m passionate about learning languages because it is pure poetry, to express the same feeling in a completely different way. In English I could say ‘I don’t care’ while in German I’d say ‘That’s sausage to me’. In English I’d call my older friend by her name and in Korean I’d just call her ‘older sister’. It reminds me that our differences reflect our humanity in each other, that the words we learn reveal the lives and motivations within us. I love languages because not only are they poetic, but it brings our lives closer to one another, both in speech and understanding. And as Nelson Mandela once said: “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to a man in his own language, that goes to his heart.”

I see myself in a publishing house. Reading query letters, responding to emails. Completing the tasks required of an internship meant to familiarize me with the publishing industry. One of my goals is to snag an internship in this field, because the more I learn about it, the better I’ll be able to tackle it myself. My goal is to publish a book. And while it may seem easy to many, under the surface there is a labyrinth so vast you’d half expect to find a minotaur at the center of it. Agents and pitches and query letters that may never see the light of day, daunting even to those who have enough societal privilege that they’ll never have to worry about their work being tossed because “we already have a Black author on our roster this cycle”. So in the future, I am writing, and editing, and writing again. Combing through publishers for one that seems just so. Learning enough about the industry so I don’t flounder in meetings and emails. Fulfilling a goal of walking into a bookstore, and seeing a hardcover with my name at the bottom.

My short story received the first place prize. It was a story of two sisters, their opinions on the conflict with the neighboring nation in direct opposition with one another. This rift came to a head when the younger sister stated her marriage arrangement; one that would bring her directly across the border and into the arms of the neighboring prince. Winning the contest with this story, being recognized for years of effort and work, reminded me to continue on the path that I was on. I knew that my writing skills were acceptable, but really motivated me was keeping track of my progress. Page after page, notebook and journal alike, filled with my writings and pressing the walls of my bookshelf from end to end. These pages remind me of where I came from, how far I’ve come and how far I’ll continue to go. I improve by looking back on them, by writing every day, and looking forward to the future. Every rejection is a goal, a stepping stone to the day I will hear a resounding yes. Every piece, every contest, every scholarship essay is a reminder that my dreams as a writer is not a wish or a dream, but a promise.