Focus on Emerging Writers The winter 2020 issue of New England Review, shipping now from the printer, is by turns bracing, inspiring, surprising, and devastating. Like every issue of NER, it gives readers a chance to expand their sense of the known world through language, image, and narrative. But what’s different is that this issue is almost entirely populated by emerging writers, and for many this is among their first publications. You’ll find essays about the training of bots, the loss of narrative in farming, land “reclamation” in Colorado, and the possible meanings behind a single lost shoe. Eight short stories explore a sea turtle preserve; the August heat in Austin; a spa in Koreatown, LA; and a women’s shelter in Juarez, Mexico. Also included are fifteen poets, all new to