There is something truly special about a new literary magazine being born in this time of global chaos. The Lemonwood Quarterly’s founding editor Jennifer Cannell adds this tagline to her new endeavour: “A new literary magazine for today’s world,” a phrase that, while general, suggests that there is something we can do about today’s world: Keep writing great fiction. She writes, “The Lemonwood Quarterly humbly aspires to provide a creative space in the spirit of our namesake: evergreen, sheltering, resistant, and healing. Exquisite and fresh.”

I started writing “A Necessary Assumption” in my MFA program at The Sewanee School of Letters at The University of the South. The class was with novelist and editor at The Cincinnati Review, Michael Griffith, a wonderful fellow whose encouragement and advice has everything to do with why I continue devoted to the craft of writing short fiction and whose counsel is between every line of this tale, which took five years to bloom into its present form and find a home.

I hope you enjoy my story.