Fusion — the blend­ing of cul­tures and gen­res, the com­ing-togeth­er of minds — under­lies some of the most inno­v­a­tive devel­op­ments in lit­er­a­ture today. It’s also a bedrock of the design and con­tent of Paper Brigade.

For sev­er­al con­trib­u­tors to this issue, food writ­ing is a means of explor­ing how Jew­ish his­to­ry has been impact­ed by dif­fer­ent cul­tures. Cook­book authors Benedet­ta Jas­mine Guet­ta and Leah Koenig each high­light the evo­lu­tion of a unique Ital­ian Jew­ish dish; Jack Haz­an explains that his recipes are a trib­ute to his grandmother’s Syr­i­an tra­di­tions as well as his own Amer­i­can childhood.

A piece titled ​“Fusion” — which includes essays by Ben Nadler and Aaron Israel and Sawako Okochi — traces ele­ments of Ashke­nazi food from thir­teenth-cen­tu­ry Europe to Okochi and Israel’s New York restau­rant, Shalom Japan. Like much of what we pub­lish in Paper Brigade, this piece com­bines gen­res, a syn­er­gy Nadler finds par­tic­u­lar­ly pow­er­ful. ​“As a comics artist, I’m inspired by pos­si­bil­i­ties of fus­ing words, col­ors, light­ing, and com­po­si­tion to tell sto­ries,” he reflects. ​“With noth­ing but pen and paper, I simul­ta­ne­ous­ly become a direc­tor, cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er, cos­tume design­er, and prop mas­ter.” Okochi and Israel high­light yet anoth­er kind of fusion: the inter­weav­ing of sto­ries that cowrit­ing entails.

Of course, not all nar­ra­tives are eas­i­ly rec­on­ciled. In an inter­view, Jonathan Rosen and Rachel Aviv dis­cuss how descrip­tions and diag­noses of men­tal ill­ness by patients, doc­tors, and the media can be harm­ful­ly at odds. In ​“Writ­ing Styles, Think­ing Styles,” eight authors share their star­tling­ly dif­fer­ent modes of think­ing and how these thought pat­terns impact their work. ​“Holo­grams,” a short sto­ry by Adam Schorin, address­es the dan­ger of tech­nol­o­gy eras­ing the nuances of indi­vid­ual Holo­caust sur­vivors’ tes­ti­monies. This mir­rors wide­spread con­cerns about AI over­shad­ow­ing writ­ers’ cre­ativ­i­ty in the near future.

While fusion involves blend­ing, it doesn’t pre­clude indi­vid­u­al­i­ty. ​“In the end,” as Okochi and Israel write, ​“we want each oth­er’s voice to come through and also fuse har­mo­nious­ly with our own.”