I once attended a lecture with a rather prominent editor of Indian literature. During his talk, he mused that literary fiction was, for the most part, considered “highbrow,” whereas genre fiction was generally perceived as “lowbrow” prose. He then proposed that there was no reason genre fiction could not reach the lyrical heights of literary fiction, nor anything to prevent a literary piece from embracing a complex plot. Then, rather whimsically, he coined the phrase “middlebrow fiction” to describe writing that incorporates the best of both worlds. I believe, in the pages that follow, you will find stories that have been most delicately woven to capture that very essence.

Whether within the clinical and corrupt dystopian future of Like, Comment, & Repeat; while treading through the creeping supernatural occurrences of Bhay; immersed in the moral corrosion of A Burning; swept along by the hallucinogenic kaleidoscopes of The Soho Vanishing; or witnessing the final, horrific solution of a mother’s love in Ink and Paper, And Mother’s Stories—you will see that each of these works blurs boundaries.

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They remind us that the labels of literary and genre serve critics more than readers. What truly matters is the ability of a story to move us, to haunt us, to make us question who we are and what we believe. The beauty of the fiction written here is that it refuses to choose between elegance and urgency or characters and plot. These tales demand both.

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I would like to extend my gratitude to the authors for their remarkable contributions and to the editors, whose care and dedication helped shape these pieces. I hope that, as you digest these stories, you find not only moments of wonder and unease, but also the quiet satisfaction of seeing fiction brought fully to life. Above all, I wish you the same enjoyment in reading them as we had in bringing them together.