A NOTE FROM THE EDITORS
Dear Reader,
Ursula K. Le Guin once wrote: “Artists are people who are not at all interested in the facts—only in the truth. You get the facts from outside. The truth you get from inside.”
To publish a literary magazine in an age of performative candor is to navigate this paradox. Facts are clean, inert things—dates, names, the sharp edges of what can be proven. Truth is messier. Yet, every piece of art or writing comes down to the question: What truth does this hold? Candour is interested in the truth and honesty of art, even if that means the moment before the answer is rehearsed, sanitized, or sanded into something “presentable.” We believe that to create is to surrender, to loosen the grip on the polished self we so carefully construct and let slip what we’ve hidden even from ourselves. We hope that once piece at a time, this surrender becomes a combustion of voices— yours, ours, the reader’s— in a space where “messiness” is celebrated.
To our contributors: thank you for trusting us with your untidy epiphanies. To our readers: tread gently. The most fragile things are often the most alive.
Sincerely,
Emma and Maggie
