Dear Reader,

It’s almost been a year since we founded Marmalade Lit. A year of frantically reading submissions on trains, before classes, in hotel rooms—and essentially anywhere else you can imagine. A year of connecting with the literary community through fellow magazines, social media, libraries, and more. A year that’s brought us over 1000 cumulative submissions! That’s mostly from the overwhelming support that Issue 2 has received. We are thrilled to report that Marmalade Lit’s second issue garnered 878 submissions from forty-six countries and forty-two US states. It was a joy to read all of those pieces, each of which provided us a brief glimpse into young minds around the globe.

However, with the tripling of our submission pool, we also saw a sharp increase in AI submissions. In a time where we’re frequently left questioning whether media online—from writing to visual art to music—is created by a human or by artificial intelligence, it’s more critical than ever to share the stories, ideas, and beliefs that come from our own minds in our own voices. Marmalade Lit has a strict no-AI policy, and we were disappointed to see blatant violations. Writing can be hard and takes effort, care, and time, but writing’s value emerges from what you put into it. No matter how stylistically adept AI may seem, its output fundamentally lacks humanity. After all, our mission is to amplify your work, not ChatGPT’s!

On a brighter note, Issue 2 gave us the opportunity to host ourfirst ever competition: The 2026 Spring Contest. We were excited to see that writers around the world approached the theme “current” with such creative perspectives. From poems tinged with climate anxiety and grief to prose examining current events, we were awed by the caliber of writing we received. Judging the contest was no easy task, but as you read on into the issue, we believe you’ll see the tenderness that drew us to winner Emily Tong’s “BREAKING NEWS: UNIVERSE, DEAD AT 13.8 BILLION YEARS OLD.” 

Along with Tong’s piece, this issue contains explorations of intergenerational trauma, the diasporic experience, and the oppressive presence of technology in the modern age. As we were determining the order of pieces, we struggled with tonal inconsistencies—how could a poem about sharing a mango sit side by side with one about a horrific massacre? But the quiet moments deserve space, even alongside the earth shattering ones. Growing up is about reckoning with the tension of the world’s atrocities and beauty. That is what makes one, in the words of contributor Maxwell Harris, “worldly.”

We wanted to close with a quote from Yuhan Wu’s “Mangoes” that encapsulates the growth and gratitude we have for the seeds of creativity you’ve all shared with us—whether you’re submitters, contributors, or readers: “And soon someday, we will have a colony / of mango trees too. Raising their cathedral of fledgling leaves above some future roof / where other children climb, with salt in their hair and seeds in their pockets.” 

We encourage you to give us a follow on Instagram or TikTok @marmalade_lit, and to submit to Issue 3! More announcements are coming soon—including a Fall Contest—so stay tuned for updates. And with that, welcome to Issue 2.

Warmly,

Sierra & Lucile

Marmalade Lit