Dear friends,

 

Goodbyes are hard. We’re writing this editors’ letter with a bittersweet announcement: moving forward, Nearness will no longer be publishing new content. Since last April, the world around us has shifted more dramatically and rapidly than ever before in many of our lifetimes. We’ve weathered the brunt of a global pandemic, confronted racial injustices with protest and uprisings, and are slowly emerging into a future that may look quite different than we would have expected a year ago.

 

As a platform specifically focused on collecting responses to the global pandemic, Nearness was always intended as a project with specific parameters. Though the pandemic is not over, with vaccines becoming available to the general public the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel feels closer than it has in a long time. 

 

When we dreamed up Nearness last April, we were both in a state of flux, living outside of our typical lives and feeling untethered from normalcy in a disorienting way. We began Nearness with the hope of creating the community we needed to make it through the pandemic. What resulted exceeded our expectations in every way: we’ve met friends and collaborators, taken solace in the beautiful work submitted, learned and grown together--and we hope you have too. This has been more than we’ve ever imagined, and we’re so grateful for every one of you. We hope to keep in touch, and will leave the site, Instagram and email up and running for the foreseeable future. Thank you for sharing this experience with us.

 

Sending you lots of love,

 

Anna & Alia