Wellspringwords® Literary Anthology
To Be a Living Ancestor
Issue 5 | Spring/Summer 2026
cover artwork by Steph
In this issue of our Literary Anthology, we wish to explore our humanity through a sacred lens.
As beings of the Earth, we begin a physical ancestral journey as soon as we’re born. There is wisdom that lives through and beyond each of us, and there is wisdom waiting to be created through our individual and collective life experiences.
Through the body, through what is woven, through our choices, through what is passed down, through forgetting, through remembering, through breaking apart, through union, through birth, through completion — what can it mean To Be A Living Ancestor? Not an individual only looking to those who came before for guidance, but an individual genuinely, messily, intentionally (or unconsciously), living their ancestral experience?
We invited women and men of the global majority to soulfully explore this theme.
Contributors to this issue identify as…
Nigerian-American-Global | Dominican-American | Black | Jamaican-American | Yoruba-American | Afro-Indigenous | Palestinian-Canadian | Chicano | Caribbean-American
…so heritage, culture, and custom journey with us in this sacred storytelling.
Deep gratitude and respect to all the writers, artists, editors, and community members who made this issue possible.
As you journey through the works below, we invite you to engage through your heart, higher mind, and your whole body.
Please be aware that some content in this issue engages with death and physical abuse as noted by (cd) content disclaimer.