The Public Journal is not here to bring you poetry nor fiction—it's here to provide a unique outlet of self-obsession and candid expression, while still maintaining a literary and artistic viewpoint. Though it's often hard to weed out the people who feign their emotions and prose for this book, I genuinely believe the great majority of you write and make art for yourselves. If The Public Journal facilitates some of that release, then so be it. Let the byproduct explode right onto these pages! Our issues collect together what has always been churned into private words and images: physicality, anxiety, and observations on the little poetic gestures that often go by unseen or at least unrecorded. Our duty is to make these intimately public.     -- Daniela Perdomo, LA'07, founder