This project explores the struggles many endured through COVID and BLM, all while examining the author's personal hardship in family, spirituality, and sexuality. Join Philip Runia in reflecting on love, loss, and the merged, mystical space between them.

Philip Runia is a writer and editor based in Portland, Oregon. At the University of Iowa, they earned degrees in Journalism and Mass Communication, English and Creative Writing, and a minor degree in Cinema. While engaging with the vibrant arts community in Iowa City, their work has been published in The Daily Iowan, Little Village Magazine, and Fools Magazine. They have served as Fiction Editor for Earthwords, and currently serve as Associate Fiction Editor for BRINK; both are literary reviews. As an editor, they find purpose in facilitating the shine of underrepresented and innovative writers, all while growing in their own writing. Philip's writing focuses on ideas of trauma and belonging, affectation, and the awkward balance between planes of existence.