Nobody #1

For Nobody issue #1, we chose the theme “Failure,” a topic that we felt was a good jumping off point. It is both something that is often misunderstood — forced into categories — and something that unites us. After all, we all fail. We even failed to make every story fit perfectly within our “Failure” theme. But in these pages, you’ll find glimpses of life under the pandemic — including Shimeko Frankiln’s crowd-sourced collage project, Quarantine Confessions, and Dean Snodgrass’s lockdown photo diary, A Walk to the Garden — as well as dramas that have played out over years and generations, such as the essays by Eda Yu and Andrew Ritchie. Our other pieces stretch from New Jersey to Istanbul to a closet in Copenhagen where we peer into the lives of strangers to find stories about everything else.

— from Nobody Magazine

Reading these stories helped me see that failure isn't something to be ashamed of. It's something we all experience, even if we don’t talk about it. It reminded me that the things we often try to hide — the mess, the uncertainty, the quiet sadness — are exactly the things that make us human. And in that shared humanness, there’s connection, and even hope.

— Aqilah, QUPL