If you are reading this, you have survived a year like no other in American history. Political upheaval, a global pandemic that is far from over—and yet, some certainties prevail. We need each other, the human connection, art. More than ever before, we need to find ways to come together, to create healing tools as we pick up the pieces of the past and reimagine a healthier and more equitable future. But first we have to take a hard look at things as they are. This can be very painful.

Fiction can help us do that. The pieces in this issue of Please See Me take eclectic approaches to our theme of Mental Health and grappling with the trauma inflicted by COVID-19, but they all ring with felt experience and the courage of survivors. Fiction can give us a way to have control if we choose to give up control briefly and see where the author’s words take us. Does the story help us, change us, give us new energy for deciphering and managing a complicated—and virus-threatened—world? Sometimes it’s enough just to confirm that we, the readers, are not unique in facing a situation or problem. Writers don’t necessarily have answers—but they can frame universal questions, and help us feel less alone.

For this issue, I’ve been inspired to revisit e craft of fiction, asking myself how great writing may or may not help us solve problems in the real world. My search has led me to A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, a new book on craft by George Saunders, who has some refreshing thoughts on what good fiction can or should do. He quotes liberally from some of his favorite Russian authors. Some insights from Saunders that I found particularly striking:

“The true beauty of a story is not in its apparent conclusion, but in the alteration of the mind of the reader that has occurred along the way. Art has to make us feel the problem fully, without denying any part of it.”

Or, as he quotes Chekhov, “Art doesn’t have to solve problems, it only has to formulate them correctly.”

The stylistically eclectic pieces comprising our Fiction section in this issue achieve the level of art thanks to our authors’ ability to make us feel, deeply, the fears and hopes, the unprecedented everyday realities of the characters in their stories. Our writers don’t claim to solve the complex problems they describe. In “The Gravity of Adrianne Lane,” we experience in empathetic detail a young woman’s impulse to self-harm, and perhaps her ultimate liberation; “The Daily News Blues” takes us through the typical—almost impossible—day of a person with multiple health challenges in the face of COVID-19; “When We Meet Again” gives us a vivid, multicultural frame through which to examine our assumptions and attitudes about mental health. “The Monster” uses stylistic exaggeration to nail the very real insecurities and paranoia of a young woman, and “Mrs. Mulvaney” shows us the tender solicitude of a caregiver. “Six Fourteen” painstakingly delineates how even successful medical professionals may sometimes cope with mental illness, such as an almost crippling obsessive-compulsive disorder.

May the offerings in this issue help you find comfort and healing in knowing that although you may still be feeling isolated and fearful, uncertain of what the near future holds in store, you are not truly alone. This severely challenging time in the history of humankind will pass. Literature, art, drama and music produced during this period will lay the groundwork for us to survive and thrive—perhaps even to inspire and amaze future generations.

Let us give ourselves permission to seek and experience joy, even during these unfathomable days and endless weeks of the new normal. To quote from Saunders quoting Tolstoy, consider that “The aim of the artist is not to solve a problem irrefutably but to make people love life in all its countless inexhaustible manifestations.”

Barbara Riddle is the guest fiction editor of Please See Me.