Issue 3 of The Dawn Review celebrates work that is surprising and otherworldly. In every piece, the self is intimately connected to its environment– as the world turns and folds inward, the self is reconstructed, and new usages of language are essential for capturing the transformations that occur in the crossroads. The works in Issue 3 refuse a concrete ending, just as life itself forces us to be constantly reborn. In “Sanctuary with the Burning Self,” Muhammed Olowonjoying renews language, writing, “I oasis of my existence. I camouflage / into fluorescence.” Meanwhile, LeAnn Perry wakes the dead in “Yes, No, Goodbye,” and Edward Gunawan allows personhood to bloom between the lines of his contrapuntal poem. Even as summer ends in Fiona Jin’s “Cassiopeia,” time is relentless, keeping the speaker “so here, so here, so here.” Issue 3 highlights the best work from the Dawn Review’s third reading period, as well as the winner and the finalists of the Dawn Prize for Poetry, judged by Sarah Ghazal Ali. Ultimately, the writers and artists in this third issue buckle against the restraints of language and form – in doing so, they unearth beauty and strangeness in how we build, rebuild, and destroy ourselves.

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