When I first proposed This Makes up the Sky: A Year of Looking Upward, I couldn’t have anticipated how much I would need the sky myself. How much I would need to remember to look up.
For me, this year brought losses that felt like gravity reversing. I lost two sisters within months of each other, everything felt unreliable. There were mornings when looking up felt impossible, when the sky seemed too fragile to hold what I was carrying, to hold what the world was carrying. On top of my own losses, communities around me lost so much. And the country continued to fight a war with itself. Of course, there were also many positives, growths, celebrations—so much joy intermingled between holding breaths. Through all of this, the themes we explored together through this blog series became unexpected companions through the grief and through the joy. Dreams reminded me that even in darkness, we carry possibility. Cheesy but truth. Birds was a reminder that migration is survival, that leaving one place for another is sometimes the bravest form of remaining. And here we are, some of us still needing that reminder. Weather taught me that storms pass, that precipitation nourishes even as it floods, that chaos and calm exist in the same system.
Lullaby by Linda Dove
We Are All Falling by Avery C. Castillo
Just Above the Surface by Diosa Xochiquetzalcóatl
Dreamscapes by Lucy Rodriguez-Hanley
Red Light at Bolsa Chica and Edinger by Mary Camarillo
The Nature of a Place by Martina Madani
Two in the Bush by Barbara Ruth SaundersÂ
Second Grade by Lori Anaya
Weather: Water Cycle, Solid States, Stability of, see Unstable, see Apply Force, see Apply Heat, See Be Hella L.A. By Cynthia Alessandra Briano
We Survive the Storm: Floods and the People of Assam by Sreejayaa Rajguru
Collectively, we felt the world crash down in ways both personal and political, intimate and global. We witnessed systems fail and certainties dissolve. And still, we kept writing. We kept looking up.
Over the course of this series, we received 233 submissions from writers across the world. Ketchikan to Bangalore, Brooklyn to Singapore, Alabama to Montreal, Mumbai to South Africa, Pennsylvania to Malaysia. Each submission was a testament to our shared sky, proof that no matter where we stand, we’re all witnessing the same endlessness above us, interpreting it through our own lived experiences, our own lenses, our own moments of _(fill in the blank)_.
What struck me most while curating this series was how each piece, regardless of theme, carried its own form of light. We see that when water becomes destroyer, there’s light in the witnessing, of documenting, of refusing to let suffering go unnamed. And we learn the ways in which light arrives “regardless,” that it “doesn’t ask for permission,” that even when we hide from it, it finds us. This fact will save us. The work in the series maps a year of collective resilience.
NO COINCIDENCE by Elizabeth Iannaci
Moonscape: A Memory by Jennifer Germano
Light Finds Me Anyway by Melba MorelÂ
A reciprocity of rituals by Elisabeth Contreras-Moran
Clouds by Karineh Mahdessian
How clouds are made by Isabel Grey
L.A. in the Rain by Heather Romero-Kornblum
The Hour the Rain Changed the Room by Veronica Tucker
Golden Apples in the Snow by Linea Jantz
Murmuration at Jack’s Pizza by Alene Terzian-Zeitounian
This year transformed me in ways that I hadn’t known were possible, and I know I’m not the only one who can say this about 2025. Grief can literally rewrite definitions of permanence and belonging. But I hope that this series, in some ways, became a practice in being honest with the weight we carry. Practice in honesty is what we all do as writers anyway, right? The writing, the submitting work, the accepting of rejection and acceptance…sometimes simultaneously. The honesty is in the doing. I’m so grateful for Women Who Submit for always challenging us to continue doing the thing that is most honest. Writing and letting it go and writing and continuing.
To every writer who submitted—whether your work was published or not—thank you for trusting us with your sky. Thank you for mapping your corner of the world. You remind us that we’re never looking up alone. And thank you to Ashton Cynthia Clarke for all of your remarkable work on the socials. And to Xotchil-Julisa Bermejo and the rest of the Women Who Submit team, thank you for being a catalyst .
Keep looking up.
Jessica Ceballos y Campbell
jessica@alternativefield.com
Thank you for this astounding series, Jessica and contributors. Live in the light, everyone!