This Week in the Letterbox - Issue 4
Your weekly digest to epistolary stories, series, diary entries, and creative letters.
Editor’s Note
This week reminded me why I built The Letterbox Creative.
I opened my inbox and found letters that didn’t try to impress, they just told the truth. Some were the start of something longer. A series unfolding, one entry at a time. Others were small but sharp. Honest in the way only diary pages and unsent letters can be.
There’s something sacred about that.
Letting a story take its time. Letting it breathe.
Thank you for being here. For reading with a soft heart.
I hope something in this week’s letters stays with you.
With love,
Dakkota
💌 New Letters This Week
To Pledge My Love to You: A Correspondence (2013-2025) by Cédric Van Caeter
"Lonely among them" at dinner. I didn't talk much, dreamed this letter…
The Journal of Silas von Eltz by Riker Rhodes
“When I was a child, I asked my father where my mother had gone. I was told she had been taken away. I was told the scoundrel left sand in her place.”
→ Read the first series entry here
The Stories I Never Said Outloud by @aromanticrealist
And now, for the first time in almost a week, she was leaving her house for something other than survival…
Some letters are reserved for our members. Join the Letterbox Circle to read every story in full.
✍️ Community Corner
📮 This Week’s Writing Prompt: “Write a letter confessing a secret you’ve never dared to say aloud—let it be messy, bold, and maybe a little scandalous.”
Leave your letter in the comments section if you’d like to share for a chance to be featured in next week’s digest.
📅 This Month’s Theme: Beginnings & Endings
Between every ending and beginning lies a breath, a fragile space where stories unfold, where doors close softly and others open wide.
This June, we’re gathering letters and diary entries and serialized fictional stories that live in that in-between space:
moments of farewell,
sparks of new paths,
and gentle shifts that change everything.
💬 Submissions Now Open
We’re looking for creative letters, diary entries, epistolary tales and serialized stories.
Submit your work → Submission Form
Thinking of submitting but unsure where to start?
Submissions are free and open to everyone for a limited time during our launch phase.
Why we’re doing this:
The Letterbox Collective is more than a place to publish words. It’s a gathering for those who cherish the art of letter writing. Here, your voice finds its home, and your stories find readers who truly listen.
💬 Join the Letterbox Circle
Become a member of the Letterbox Circle — a supportive, editorially-guided space for tender, truthful writing.
Members receive:
• Personalized editorial feedback
• Access to monthly Letter Lounge chats
• Full access to serialized letters, diaries, and bonus content
• The opportunity to be featured in the Weekly Digest
Upgrade your subscription to unlock everything at The Letterbox Collective.
🌟 Contributor Spotlight
We're saving this space for you.
Soon, this section will highlight writers from the collective—
Letters that moved us.
Diary entries that stayed with us.
Stories that made us feel less alone.
✍️ Your Voice
✨ Inspiration Corner
“Everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise.”
— from The Journals of Sylvia Plath
See you next week with more letters and more reasons to keep writing.
Dakkota
Founder, The Letterbox Collective
Dakkota,
I don't know in what timeline we might have met, and I have these lyrics that keep coming back to me: "if you were the Baltic Sea..." I can only be amazed and honored to be published so quickly.
These letters had been turning within me for six months, like the epicenter of something, but I didn't want to expose them to the light. I thought I would filter them through the romantic awkwardness of my novel's characters. Then your Letterbox proposal came to my attention last week. Only yesterday did I read this month's theme carefully, and it seems I've done only one thing: become capable of receiving your encouragement.
If you were the Baltic Sea, you would be those northern waters–terribly quiet, but carrying within them welcome and becoming. I've only been there once, to the shore of that sea, and it was in the dead of winter. I placed my hand in that water: the coolness was more than pleasant, though I couldn't have swum in it at that moment. I was moved enough.
Returning from that journey, I felt the urge to write. This is not a metaphor–I took that trip twenty years ago. I want to continue these letters, and I owe that to you. To your generosity in organizing these publications. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.