Letter from the Editors

Dear Readers,

As the wars in Ukraine, the Middle East, Myanmar, Sudan, and a half dozen other places become further snarled and entrenched, one can feel like there's nothing they can do to affect any difference. These conflicts are simply too massive.

While this perspective can be true, we found that as we edited this issue, a theme emerged reminding us how distorted it can be. The theme was this: affecting a difference when it comes to the realities of war doesn't only have to happen on a global scale—it can and absolutely should include the more local ones. So many pieces in this volume convey how taking action within your city, neighborhood, or family can have a meaningful and lasting impact on those involved in war or geopolitical violence.

We see this in "A Trip to Kosovo" where a doctor returns to the war-torn country to navigate its broken bureaucracy in hopes of getting his nephew immediate cancer treatment (a piece that pointedly ends with: If the world can be saved, it will be by small acts of kindness). It appears in "Withdrawal" with the narrator always answering his phone in case it's a fellow soldier or a refugee in dire need. It's there in "The Lucky Ones" as a director for an adoption agency in Korea reveals to women the tricks necessary to help their babies find safe homes.

Maybe the most conspicuous example of this theme, though, is in the Translations Feature, which consists of works written in Arabic and centering on the Palestinian experience. Translations Editors Parisa Saranj and Fathima M. frame all ten pieces of the feature by stating, What else can we do but bear witness to the pain of our fellow human beings? Literature has been the first recordkeeper of what humans are capable of doing to and for each other.

We couldn't agree more. Through literature or art concerned with conflict, any one of us can bear witness to the war-related experiences and realities of others. By doing so, we give ourselves the chance to engage with consequences that may be unknown to us and thus develop a more nuanced understanding of them. After all, affecting difference doesn't only have to be an external act. It can and absolutely should be an internal one too.

Sincerely,
The Editors

George Kovach (1947-2020), author of the poetry collection The Light Outside, served as a combat infantryman in Vietnam where he was awarded a Purple Heart and two Bronze Stars for Valor. He returned home, married, completed his undergraduate degree, raised three children, and had a twenty-year career in the field of commercial real estate. While working to overcome debilitating symptoms of PTSD, he returned to his love of literature and earned his MA and then MFA in Creative Writing at UMass Boston. In 2008, he then launched CONSEQUENCE Magazine (now simply Consequence), an award-winning literary journal addressing the culture and consequences of war through poetry, prose, and visual art. George turned his disabling experience of war into an act of literary creation, and dedicated himself to editing and publishing the work of international artists and writers who understood and expressed war's meaning and impact the world over.

"In a culture where war-making is obscured, and the costs rendered invisible, Consequence performs the essential function of highlighting the experience of war from every angle, from participants and observers, combatants and civilians, and artists of all types across international boundaries. That's why I'm especially grateful to have been included in their pages at a time when most other journals passed on my work. If there is a way forward, it must come from the sort of thinking and humanistic engagement done in the pages of Consequence." — Phil Klay, veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps and winner of the 2014 National Book Award for Fiction

"Consequence nurtures the voices of Veterans and brings their stories to both a reading audience and an artistic community, which they have created. Finding community and being heard is what allows Veterans to reintegrate into society, making the work done by Consequence essential." — Elliot Ackerman, Marine Corps special ops team leader and New York Times-bestselling author

"It's not that the work of Consequence is vital—in an America mired in a forever foreign war, that's self-evident. It's that the work of Consequence is excellent, consistently piercing and true, devoted to hard reckoning and hard peace and writers who believe in both." — Matt Gallagher, a U.S. Army veteran and author of the novels Daybreak and Empire City