As much as everyone uses the phrase "Don't judge a book by its cover," the reality is that we all do — and for good reason: a book's cover is its first chance to grab our attention, to communicate the story within its pages, to convince customers that it will be worth their time and effort to read — no pressure!

The neighborhood grocery occupies the ground level of a rowhouse, long and narrow like our homes. The young owners only allow four customers inside at a time, and even then I feel like a knight on a chessboard trying to sidle around the produce case without brushing against a masked stranger at the register. The owners have been providing nitrile gloves at the door; you can’t wear your own.

Kaitlyn Pacheco is the writer behind "I Wanted to Listen to His Stomach, Not Miss Him," a story about how the pandemic affected her relationship with her long-term, long-distance boyfriend. At the time, Pacheco had started working as a magazine journalist in Baltimore, but before she could settle into her surroundings, she found herself living in a strange new world. We caught up with Pacheco nearly three years after her story takes place:

I told myself that this was to shield the children, who had never seen anything dead before, but when I returned, I was the one unable to look at the crow full on. Instead, I glanced at one part of its body at a time and then shifted my gaze away. Black claws, raspberry bush. Black beak, camelia. I took a deep breath and lifted the shovel. One blue eye fixed open.

I waited eight months before they repeated the tests. A very long time to wonder. And then another surprise came. There were now two cysts and the first one had grown.

And suddenly, when you are seventeen-and-three-quarters, your dad who is a doctor stops coming home. You hear the mention of long nights and cramped halls, and one day, out of the blue, someone uses the word “pandemic.” And then, when you ask what a pandemic is, a doting relative says that it is a part and parcel in the medical world. It is one of the things that goes into your dad being a doctor.

Before you hit that submit button, you’ll want to read the requirements as we are only considering stories that meet certain qualifications.

I gingerly mentioned my goals to my daughter who suggested I could make it to the closest driveway right now. Even though there was no snow on the ground, I didn’t think the walk was possible and allowed fear to convince me it would probably never be so.

In that briefest of moments between opening one door and the next, what struck me most was how far away he stood. As I opened the porch door with as cheery a greeting as I could muster, he shuffled at the foot of our entrance steps, pile of varied sized parcels in his hands.

As cranky and reactive as I’d been, I wanted the pre-COVID New York back, brimming with loud and irritating people.

“Red Alert: Level 1 Incoming” screams one of the nurses on the intercom. I sigh and rub the bags under my eyes, hoping that this incoming code is the hysteria that normally happens at the end of a fourteen-hour shift in the emergency room. I cling to the counter of the breakroom and press my fingertips into the quartz countertops while waiting for the instant coffee to slosh with the boiling water I dispensed.

We know it's a bit of a cliche tradition, but we wanted to take a moment to reflect and share our progress this year — after all, what are traditions for, if not to provide routine in unprecedented times?

The 2019-2020 'Black Summer' bushfire period in Australia was unprecedented. Over 80% of the Blue Mountains National Park was impacted, with devastating effects on biodiversity. This place played such a significant role in my life, and many of those close to me.

“My life as an international educator came to an abrupt halt and my plans to pack my life into my backpack for another adventure vanished as though they had never been…”

“After having my first child just a few days before the pandemic and lockdowns began, I knew I needed to document the experience of new parenthood during this time...”