Dear Reader:

Where is Cherry Road, and what is it like? Our editors have been trying to answer this question ever since we first came together last May with the shared goal of reinvigorating the written word in our generation and encouraging writers of all ages to keep engaging with and challenging literary convention. 

Each of the pieces published in this outstanding inaugural issue answer this question a little differently. But we can point to a couple of qualities they all have in common. You won’t find stories on Cherry Road that know where they’re going from the start. You won’t find poems that begin with a message or a point of view and expect images to fall into place as mere signposts, pointing out the surest way to get there. 

Everyone who lives on Cherry Road is of the world, even if the world they think they’re living in isn’t one you recognize. Self-understanding, for them, is an ongoing pursuit borne of consistent engagement with this vivid material world: they touch things and see things and smell things, and know that it is only by doing these things that they can figure out who they are and what they are trying to say. 

On Cherry Road we believe in sincerity. We believe in irony that is really sincerity in disguise. We believe in formal verse. We believe in informal verse. We believe that art must be interpretable; that it must expect readers to be able to join in its emotional and intellectual project; that making art that wants to be cleverer than its readers is no more honourable than shouting into a telephone with no-one at the other end. We believe that readers are in fact much cleverer than artists give them credit for. 

On Cherry Road, all the ordinary pieces of life are re-animated, re-enchanted, made strange. It’s like nowhere you’ve been before and yet it is absolutely familiar. 

When you’re ready to leave, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Constructive criticisms, regular criticisms, submissions for our next issue, comments on the weather, or anything else of a similar nature can be sent to cherryroadreview@gmail.com. 

With gratitude,

The Editors
Charlotte Ungar & Maisie Bilston