With immense gratitude to all our dear contributors, I’d like to thank each and every one of you in your individual artistic capacities. We dedicate this issue to the writers who language their inexplicable experiences, the poets who dilute their ink with pain and create magic, and the artists who give us the eyes to see beyond our limited thoughts; here we champion all of them.

Labyrinths symbolize uncertainty: but how can we be certain that even non-’labyrinths’ are truly certain? Does that give the labyrinth countless meanings? Our 20th Issue was themed ‘Labyrinth’ because we wanted to create a space for our wonderful contributors to navigate the ambiguities of their lives and give us a glimpse of what living truly means. We could not have imagined how apt this theme would be, for both us as editors and for our contributors. 

To birth this issue, the editors and contributors (and readers) have journeyed through the Labyrinth of Life. While confronting dead ends in search of hope, we find each other as pillars along the way. Therefore, this issue is a collective voyage where we witness illnesses of our loved ones, suffer chronic health issues, encounter family dilemmas, fight for our lives, grieve inconsolably at the helplessness of inexplicable situations, or sometimes just work to wake up to get through the day. 

In the same vein, I’d like to thank Kristia Vasiloff and Nwa Rizvi, our Co-Editors in Chief, for stroking just the right embers of hope. Jabeen Qadri, our Art Editor, our untiring creative inspiration; Taqdees Mela, Nonfiction Editor, giving voice when voicing is difficult; Rameen Saad, Essay Editor, our hero who doesn’t wear a cape; Saniya Khalil, our Flash Fiction and Prose Editor, who tethers us together, and Jahan Ara, our Managing Editor for our upcoming project The Missing Slate Translations (@themissingslatetraslations on instagram for more info), whose joy is a guiding light towards the end of this journey. 

Though we may never fully honor the contributions that form the very foundation of this issue, Labyrinth’s meaning will be interrogated cosmically, spiritually, physically, emotionally, and politically. I can proudly say that our Labyrinth, Issue 20, is about snatching hope from hopelessness and redefining what was once thought to be inescapable.

May ease find you where it can,

Free occupied land,

Maryam Shakeel

Managing Editor

The Missing Slate Magazine