San Francisco, California
August 9, 2000

Dear Readers,

Today’s letter is by Lillie Allison, a twelve-year-old girl who lives in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod. It’s part of our weeklong series of open letters about families.

I don’t know Lillie very well, though she and I have been corresponding by email for the past couple of months; in preparation for the creation of this editor’s letter, I sent her an email last week and asked her to fill in a few blanks. Here’s what she wrote back:

I don’t know what I can tell you about myself. I live in Woods Hole. I’m a solo and synchronized skater. I live right on the water. I haven’t read the fourth Harry Potter, but I read the other ones. Oh and I’m 12 I’ll be 13 in September. I’m going into 7th grade. I’m both an inside and outside girl. I love Woods Hole. It can be really boring in the winter though.

I first wrote to Lillie Allison at the suggestion of Ira Glass, host of This American Life; he had aired a dialogue between Lillie and her dad on this episode, and he thought she might be a good correspondent for Open Letters. I think he was right.

There are two more letters to go until the hiatus. Tomorrow’s is by Nick Davis, about his mother’s death and his daughter’s life. Friday will bring a fifth letter by X., about her teenage son.

Yesterday, the good people at the Utne Reader mentioned Open Letters in theirdaily web directive (it’s down at the bottom of that page), which was nice of them. As has occurred in some other recent press, the Utne mention concentrated as much on the medium of Open Letters as the message. Which is just fine with us. We’re fairly evangelical about our free weekly PDF subscription, as regular readers of this page are well aware. If you’re new to Open Letters, though, please allow me to direct your attention to this page, so that you can get worked up, too.

Yours truly,

Paul Tough