Editor's Foreword from our Editor in Chief
 Originally conceptualized as a literary journal consisting entirely of love letters and hate mail, bigEMOTIONS is a journal which encourages writers to express their feelings loudly and without compromise. As editorial empaths, we wanted to create a collection of works which capture a unique sentimentality, in order to express the wide range of emotions we all experience in our lives. From incandescent joy to heart-wrenching despair to downright confusion, bigEMOTIONS implores readers to become more attuned to their feelings, to better understand the various emotional responses of others, and generally to consider the variety of ways in which we emote.

 We chose to have a broad focus for our journal, as we wanted to allow readers and writers alike to explore whichever emotion they felt their work embodied, without compromise. We felt it was important to avoid limiting our submissions or focusing on a specific selection of emotions, as we wanted to avoid creating a sense that we were dictating emotionality in any way. Additionally, in order to encourage our writers to submit works with more unfettered expression, we made it a point to allow anonymous submissions. This was a purposeful divergence from the typical objective of a literary journal, where writers submit works as a way to receive credit and notoriety, as instead we wanted to create a space where people could vent emotions that they may not necessarily want associated with their name. We felt that it was important to create a space where people could express the emotions they couldn’t otherwise, or felt they couldn’t find a place for. Overall, our goal was to create a journal which could serve as a cathartic outlet for people to process all kinds of emotions without fear.

 Another major goal of bigEMOTIONS is to encourage readers to gain a deeper understanding of emotionality by creating a repository of works which explore emotion in complex and nuanced ways. Presenting multiple works which demonstrate the variety ways in which people can feel the same emotion allows readers to better understand the wide range of valid emotional responses. Moreover, as a way to make it easier for readers to find an emotion to explore, as well as to enhance the experience of our readers and visitors to the website, our design editor created the emotions wheel. This wheel not only makes exploring emotions more fun and engaging, but it also demonstrates that each emotion can be written about in diverse ways, as multiple works explore similar themes and/or can be described as embodying multiple emotions at once.

 Overall, our team felt it was important to create a journal which encourages readers to become more aware of their own feelings, to better understand how other people process complex emotions, and generally to contemplate the wide variety of emotional responses we are all capable of having. We hope that, in reading through our journal, you will find yourself both comforted and challenged by all the bigEMOTIONS on display.