Dear Reader,
I write this editor’s note to you at a time of great uncertainty. The United States is actively committing genocide in Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan for the sake of capital gain; families are being torn apart and civilians murdered by state-sanctioned violence by ICE and police; the climate crisis has meant extreme global weather events that will upend humanity indefinitely.
Discussing the exegesis of this online issue feels minuscule when considering these events on a global scale. For me, a call for “Liminality” was less to do with the aesthetics of such a recent fixation in film and TV (see Severance and Backrooms and their use of empty, winding corridors, stark fluorescent lighting, and atemporality), but rather an interrogation of the use of art, and dialogue therein, in attempting to see one another’s humanity in such times as these.
Liminality, in broad terms, is often characterized by what it is not. It is not situated candidly in one place. It is the state of being lost or being transformed. It is the in-between, the in-progress, or in-process state. We often consider liminality as a form of emptiness or absence, but to me, this online issue insists quite the opposite. Betwixt these online spaces exist reverberations of life, of empathy, of mutual understanding. Many of these pieces question one’s position in relation to the other, whether that be a family member, a stranger, a creature, or society.
These nine pieces of writing and visual art are a testament to the value of the in-between state as not just one of assumed silence but rather of potentiality, of veracity, of fullness. There are visual collages in public domain texts and images. There are multimedia forms through the use of textural and sonic painting—stories and poems that meditate on transness, on memory, and the body.
What gives me hope, dear reader, is our ability to see through the liminality of the online space, to reach out beyond ourselves and toward one another. I am truly honored to have the opportunity to edit this Mixtape issue, and I hope its art stays with you long after you read or view it, just as it has for me.
Thank you to Khaled Mattawa for the opportunity to publish this issue. And a special thanks to Elinam Agbo and Aram Mrjoian for their guidance throughout this process. Thank you to Malia Maxwell for answering my many tech questions, and to the contributors of this issue: Helen Armstrong, Kaitlan Bui, Nathan Dixon, Mylo Lam, Katherine Madden, Niamh Mac Cabe, Valeria Rodrigo Rojas, Daniel Uncapher, and Rose Zinnia. Thank you for entrusting me with your work.
From Beyond,
Jennifer Nessel
Jennifer Nessel is a writer from Pennsylvania. They earned their MFA in fiction at the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers Program, where they received Hopwood Awards for their short fiction, nonfiction, drama, and text/composition, and were a 2026 Napa Valley Conference fellow. Their writing has been supported by GrubStreet and can be found at The Southern Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Cleaver, and elsewhere.