Havik: Inside Brilliance

Letters from the Editors
Editor-in-Chief Lara Abreu
This summer I turn fifty. This knowledge floods me with myriad of
thoughts and emotions. As a stay-at-home mother for the last 16 years,
questioning my life’s choices, ambitions, and goals there has been an incessant
stream coursing through the back of my mind. What have I accomplished?
What impact have I made? While anyone who has raised
(good) children knows, this alone is a herculean endeavor. It is a daily
challenge rife with moments of incredible pride and overwhelming love,
tempered with regrettable moments of fist-clenching frustration and outbursts
of anger. It is finding the depth of mindfulness to accept the person
your child is trying to be while gently guiding them along their path. All
of this is an outward focus that can slowly, imperceptibly blur your path.
Enter Havik, whose very title, and play on words, captures the universal
experience of the last year. Serving as Editor-in-Chief was a self-imposed
leap out of my comfort zone and an opportunity for which I will
be eternally grateful. Our entire process has been virtual, creating novel
obstacles to the collaboration process. Tic-tac-toe screens of black boxes
with white names and disembodied voices sharing their thoughts and
perspectives. After our first meeting, I was flooded with feelings of doubt
and anxiety. How will we connect as a team? How can we communicate
with veracity without knowing who we all are? I needn’t have worried, for
my much younger team, by now adept at communicating in a two-dimensional
world, rose to the occasion. Our Senior Editors of Prose and Poetry
guided our teams with clear goals and experiential insight, creating a
supportive environment for us to tackle the 662 submissions we received.
Each editor embraced their works with integrity and fought for pieces that
spoke to them. Our advisors mindfully supported us as we waded through
this new platform, lending calm voices and invaluable advice. And our unflappable
Production Assistant made our vision a beautiful reality with her
quiet suggestions and powerful skills. Fueled by the incredible creativity
of our authors and artists, from New Zealand to Iraq, from Canada to the
UK, our collective determination to honor these stories and these images
was palpable. The raw emotion, vulnerability and truth we absorbed gave
birth to our title, “Inside Brilliance.”
The works we reviewed revealed a collective social conscience; outcries
against racial inequality; the impact of COVID’s tentacles in every
aspect of life; societal criticism; mental illness. These were balanced by
expressions of love lost and love found, depictions of nature’s beauty, and
the joys of simplicity. Drinking in these global perspectives of experience
quenched a thirst in us. We felt a kinship, a recognition, an affirmation
in every piece. We felt seen and heard in others’ words and images, for
what we collectively experienced in this last year has been inexplicable,
overwhelming and gravely disappointing. But knowing we are not alone
in these thoughts lends a legitimacy to COVID’s slogan of “We are in this
together.” With the utmost humbleness and awe in peoples’ creativity,
courage, and talent, we present this year’s Havik: Inside Brilliance, in the
hopes that you too may find solace and kinship in the experiences of your
fellow human beings.
Lara Abreu,
Editor-in-Chief