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This letter originally appeared in 2010.

Dear Fellow Reader,
I used to play the piano for an establishment where the roof began to leak. We had to cover the piano and drums and microphones with tarps and clutter the floor with buckets. New leaks were always springing, new buckets and bucket attendants always being drafted. The roof was repairable but we did not have the money for it; we had to close down and the music gave way to the rain. I found another job, but it was playing the organ instead of the piano, and I am an oaf on the organ; it sounds like I have shoes on my hands. Having a venue where you can play your own instrument is better than having wings. It should not be taken for granted.

October 1, 2013 by Amy Leach

This letter originally appeared in 2009.

Dear Reader,
One of the questions I have been asked most often by aspiring writers is how I began to publish. Variations of the question hint at certain myths about the publishing business—how being at the right place at the right time, or having the right connection to the right people, would be the most important factor in one’s career.

October 1, 2013 by Yiyun Li

This letter originally appeared in 2008.

Dear Fellow Reader,
In 2006 I received an unexpected e-mail from Brigid Hughes at A Public Space. She’d read a story of mine, she said, and she wondered whether it was available for her (as yet unlaunched) magazine. Her e-mail caught me at a low point in my life: I’d been away from home for almost two years, having burned my bridges with my legal career, and—more dispiritingly for me—having announced to my family and friends that I was going abroad to be “a writer.” Eighteen months later, I’d written hundreds of thousands of words and yet I felt the furthest I’d ever been from any viable conception of a writing life.

October 1, 2013 by Nam Le

This letter originally appeared in 2009.

Dear Fellow Reader,
My first stories made it into print not through the efforts of an agent or a publishing house, but because the slush pile readers at an independent literary magazine took the time to open the manila envelope I’d sent, unbidden, and to read the work according to its merit rather than the cachet of the writer’s name.

October 1, 2013 by Wells Tower