<p>We craft lives from memories, shared moments with others, and from our experience as beings in the world. Our stories emerge from fashioning bits and pieces of life together with imagination and putting these ideas into words. As writers, we build worlds, give birth to characters, and hope to create a portal into a new realm, a place of communion of ideas, where fiction is alive in the mind of the reader. That&rsquo;s the joy of having others read our work. Our stories continue in the mind of the reader. Stories become shared spaces of strength, joy, personal insight, and where the individual loses herself for a while in an alternative realm of her own creation.</p>