Editorial: Non Fiction – ULR Issue 14, Witness

As readers, we have the privilege to enter spaces ordinarily closed to public eyes. The creative nonfiction essay admits us into these testimonial rooms, doubling the force of witnessing itself. How many of us would speak if we were certain of being listened to? What would we say, tell, and show if the means were at hand—if it were safe?

Literature is a speech act. Or, as Audre Lorde reminds us, “Your silence will not protect you.” In Usawa Literary Review’s #14, themed Witness, I invite you to join the featured writers in the labour room, hurting in a car with a friend, in dormitories the night before exams, a son delineating his mother’s daily penance at home, activists interrogating language and a brilliant poet reflecting on how a Nobel prize-winning author speaks to them. Each one their own self offering their lived experience – openly on the page for you.

What more could one give? What more could literature hold than life itself, resisting erasure through the act of witness?