Dear Reader,
We are so excited to present you with the first printed issue of Cipher since February 2020! Only one of our staff members was on the Cipher team pre-pandemic. As you can imagine, this made creating this issue a big crunch-time experiment for all of us. There was a lot of sweating involved. We owe a great deal of gratitude to our staff, writers, artists, printer, and faculty advisors for their endless patience.
When we dreamed up the Sin Issue, we thought it could be a spicy introduction to a year back in person after being disconnected from one another for so long. What we received from writers was much more complex. The word “sin” evokes pleasure for some, trauma for others, fear for many. e writers for this issue explore the capacious nature of the word through their stories, dreams, and personal experiences. Anonymous ponders their preference for hooking up with older men. Anna Heimel reacts on her experience at Catholic school and its impact on her relationship with sex and masturbation. Katie Kamio and Hanna Freitas explore how sins influence our dreamscapes.
In our first free-write session, we asked writers where sins come from. Where do they live? Do they come from within or are they reflected onto us? We asked writers to reflect on their first sin, and to ponder how they learned what a sin was, how guilt found its way to them. The pieces in this issue cover a wide spectrum of sin: everything from sex, dreams, masturbation, sexuality, and religion.
We want to provide readers with a blanket trigger warning for the entirety of this issue. Many of the pieces involve themes of violence, assault, religious indoctrination, homophobia, and forms of abuse. We have also marked articles with specific content warnings.
Cipher looks different this year. We’ve reworked our budget in order to pay writers and artists for the work they submit. We now publish bi-blockly, allowing writers, artists, and editors to devote more attention and time to each issue. We hope that these changes give each issue the space to be more complex and polished. Our writers, artists, and staff have put a great deal of time and energy into this issue, and we hope you enjoy indulging in this sensual, intimate, and devilishly devious issue alongside us.
Happy sinning! ;)
Logan, Maya, and the Cipher Team