Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, a Jungian psychoanalyst, defines folklore as a mirror to the psyche. More specifically, according to Carl Jung, every part of a dream is part of the subconscious. In a sense, folklores and myths are part of a collective psyche, a culture’s shared consciousness, and they encapsulate what we fear, love, and hate—whether for good or for bad.

The work you will find in this section are the re-makings of myths. They take apart what we assume is folklore–like Janice Sapigao’s whimsical and tongue-in-cheek “Mistaken: a Choose-Your-Own Adventure Hip Hop Star Story” to Shira Erlichman’s devastatingly brutal “Kill the Sister”—and metamorphose and make anew the power of mythologizing.

There is hunger in these pieces, real longing, a need to recreate the “self”—like in Amanda Ngoho Reavey’s epic “From Acheron”—and the dreams that haunt and disembody us—like in Annalise Mabe’s chilling “Dreams We Tried to Tell You”. Desire is also embodied, like in Elizabeth Pearl’s stunning “Leaf Girl,” where nature is personified in the body of a shapeshifting, young woman.

Anaïs Nin once said, “Where the myth fails, human love begins. Then we love a human being, not our dream, but a human being with flaws.” The work in this eclectic collection embody what Nin says of myth and love—they contend with the dramas of folklore and expose the bare bones of love, spilled on the floor where a brother stands before us with his sister’s nose in his pocket. Love, like myths, has always stripped away its captive’s dreams, leaves the beholder naked and wanting. These pieces, too, will leave you naked, but not wanting. They are illuminating in their dark places, humorous when needed, and refreshingly bright in their re-makings of lore.