Issue 1

A note from the editors

First and foremost, to everyone who made this possible, thank you.

Adrift grew out of a desire to expand the conversations happening at Night School Bar by sharing the writing that emerges in its classes.  While many submissions were explicitly prompted within the classes, they were just as often self-initiated responses and reflections. These submissions all speak to the boundless nature of a project like Night School Bar, where thinking and learning have no end. We hope Adrift might serve as a waystation in this intellectual sea for the ideas, fragments, and ephemera that surface in each individual’s journey.  

For this first edition, we drafted a broad call to see what kinds of things people have been working on. We were blown away by the variety, quality, and thoughtfulness of all the submissions we received. While we were only able to select a few for the first issue, we look forward to sharing more from those voices in future editions. For this issue, we found ourselves drawn to pieces that asked questions. Some considered the nature of grief, while others acted as inquiries on process. Several pieces explored the varied forces shaping space, technology, and our perception of history.

We took the gravity of our role as editors seriously and worked to thoughtfully consider every piece we received. Each piece was read in full and discussed by the entire editorial team. All decisions were collective. As our first selections, the pieces in this issue hold a special place in our collective editorial imagination, and we hope they inspire, challenge, and change you just as much as they have us. Thank you, contributors, for letting us share your work, and thank you to those of you reading this who teach and take classes at Night School Bar for allowing us to be stewards and archivists of this very special community. Thank you to Lindsey Andrews for creating and sustaining both NSB and Adrift; your guidance, support, and leadership were critical to this work. We hope you enjoy the first issue of Adrift, and we look forward to many more editions to come.

Sincerely, 

The Editors of Adrift

Abigail Feldman and Foxx Hart