The conceptual derivation of a "fall from grace" can be found in the biblical account of the Fall, Adam and Eve's first sinful (freeing?) act. An exploration of the narrative implications of that Fall, and any other since, asks four questions regarding origin, motivation, the nature of the act, and the result. What is the nature of grace from which one has fallen? What is the motivation for the fall? How does the fall occur? And what is the result: one falls from grace, to what?

The writers in this issue explore contemporary redefinitions of the Fall, free from their biblical origins. In a literary world grown tired of redemptive texts, the Fall template becomes ever more appealing and gets interpreted in ever ampler terms. Writers and their characters are driven to fall by their search for knowledge, self-awareness, freedom, and the arrogance that makes them attempt to approach the divine as the aesthetic or the self while simultaneously severing the prelapsarian connection.

The Fall causes a fundamental transformation in the person. It is from the narrative act of the fall that we derive our aesthetic pleasure. It is the descent that compels us, whether through familiarity or fascination or a sort of temptation to know the other side. A well-executed Fall leaves us wondering whether it is redeemable, and whether it is something that even needs to be redeemed.


editor-in-chief: Kim Hooyboer
assistant editor: Leslie Beach
layout editor: Deirdre Gorman
copy editors: Leslie Beach, Stazh Zamkinos
staff: Jullianne Ballou, Meghan Carlson, Avi Conant, Ben Kegan, Robin Lewis, Dena Popova
staff artist: Tyler Calkin