"Why write?" by Jen Knox

A rally cry to our community (aka Letter from the Editor)

Many of us have experienced the clarity and strength that art, poetry, and storytelling can offer. I cannot count the number of writers who have said, verbatim, “Writing saved my life.”

The reminder that we have a steady companion in writing and other modes of artistic expression is invaluable. Meanwhile, I know it’s been difficult for many writers lately to keep going. There are days when the dreaded “why” arrives. As in “Why create?”

Photo by Niklas Jeromin

Part of this is a sign of the times—notably, the fast-moving, hazy promises of autogenerated texts from artificial “intelligence” (AI) that may slowly (or quickly) drown out individual voices in favor of a more collective and muted narrative. Books are in danger of being banned by government officials, websites are erased, social media is always shifting, and publishing has become incredibly expensive.

We can accept these shifts as mere change, inevitable, and point out the silver linings (look at all the good that AI offers, for instance), but from the artist’s perspective, if we want to connect and find community, we need to work a little harder to distinguish ourselves. What does that mean?

As writers, we know that what’s convenient is rarely of value. Writing and art hold up mirrors to societies in peril and zoom in on community issues with grace and empathy. But the question of how to sustain as an artist or writer in 2025 feels unique.

A San Antonio poet, Carmen Tafolla, once told me that anything we can buy and sell is cheap. I haven’t forgotten this. And what we can mass produce (even big data) stories is unimpressive and likely more expensive than we can imagine right now.

What requires dedication and exploration, what exposes personal wonders and pains, what calls us to action and reveals our connectivity is what Unleash is about. We believe the value of art and writing to the inner human journey is inextricably linked to our capacity for empathy and connection.

I founded Unleash with a simple goal, and that was to identify and amplify individual voices. Authentic voices. Especially voices I felt weren’t being given platforms due to myopic gatekeepers on one side and censors on the other. I visualized Unleash as a bridge between expression and community.

We’ve published brilliant works, nominated writers for awards, hosted an annual book prize since 2022 (see announcements here and in your inbox soon), cheered writers on as they parlayed stories or groups of poems into manuscripts and shared them with the world to great reception.

But in 2025, our publishing arm is struggling. Meanwhile, we feel the call to offer more. It’s a strange conundrum.

Art invites us to take the journey beyond price, beyond costs into bearing witness to the world as it is and as it should be. Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it from even the most tragic of circumstances. Art reminds us that we belong here. And if we serve, we last. My faith in art rivals my admiration for any other discourse. Its conversation with the public and among its various genres is critical to the understanding of what it means to care deeply and to be human completely. I believe. —Toni Morrison

To find a new way to connect in 2025, our team is working on a conference that you’ve seen advertised below our posts, and this will be our first step toward what we hope will be an opportunity to connect as creatives and restrengthen our collective footing.

While our first conference will be online, we are already thinking about logistics for 2026 and teasing out ways to connect in deeper ways with you. In person.

We all benefit when we explore the world from an authentic creative lens, and we need to cheer each other on along the way.

So if you’re having one of “those days,” please know that I remain interested in and dedicated to human stories. And I am not alone. We are not alone. We all benefit so greatly from reading each other’s stories—they connect us and buoy us.

I cannot wait to see what we create together this year and as we move forward.

Please know that we are always cheering you on. Your voices are more important than ever.

—Jen

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To connect with us and learn more about our mission, find us on the about page.

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Jen Knox was a high school dropout who found purpose in writing and earned a BA from Otterbein University and an MFA from Bennington College's Writing Seminars. She taught writing for over a decade and led the Writers in Communities Program at Gemini Ink. Now an award-winning author and lecturer at Ohio State University, Jen’s fiction can be found in The Best Small Fictions, The Adirondack Review, Chicago Tribune, Istanbul Review, Literary Orphans, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Room Magazine, The Santa Fe Writers Project Quarterly, and The Saturday Evening Post, among over a hundred other publications. Jen's books include We Arrive Uninvited (Steel Toe Books Award Winner in Prose) and Chaos Magic (Kallisto Gaia Press). She received grants from the Ohio Arts Council and the Greater Columbus Arts Council to work on a collection of essays. Follow her page here.

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