I’ll be entirely honest with you – I’m not confident when it comes to offering an easy definition of ‘folklore’. But there are typical images, atmospheres and stories conjured by the term . . . A certain flavour that, though we were adamant about having a folkloric theme, we didn’t want the resulting work to be tethered to.

Folklore: mythology, legend, fable, fairy tale. All these words for something that actually, I think, is very simple: story. What they prove is that storytelling is just a thing we do – can’t help but do – and have done for as long as human voices have been heard.

And what the work within these pages proves is that those stories are told, retold, untold and reinvented everywhere. If there are people, there are stories – connecting us to each other, to loved ones lost or missing, to our past and to our hidden selves. Stories seem to step in when the hard world in front of us doesn’t make sense. They offer another way through.

My suspicion that ‘folklore’ can mean many things was – joyfully – confirmed by the spectrum of work submitted for this issue. We had a record number of pieces to consider, and one of the biggest challenges to date in choosing which would make the final cut. It’s both my favourite and least favourite part of this job: finding and reading exceptional new writing, and yes, always, having to turn some of it down.

The result of all that deliberation is an issue that branches out so much further than the Mabinogion (though, of course, we have a bit of that too). While we set out on a journey rooted in Wales’ deep folkloric history, we were led to our most geographically diverse ensemble of writing talent to date. In Issue 004 we travel to California, Mizoram, Ynys Môn and Ireland. We hear ghost stories from the Philippines and desperate letters despatched to Verona.

 In translated fiction, we visit Reykjavík, with a story from bestselling Icelandic novelist Fríða Ísberg – its first introduction to anglophone readers here, in Folding Rock. And in an interview with Tom Bullough, carried out by contributing editor Horatio Clare, we come back to Wales to explore the ancient wisdom of the landscape and think toward our future.

What thrilled me most, as this issue came together, were not only the surprises (such as Alex Haydn-Williams’ fascinating dive into the hidden queer histories in Wales’ national archives), but the unexpected connections running like a web beneath its surface. We knew when we commissioned Rosy Adams to explore three different retellings of the Mabinogion’s fourth branch, the story of Blodeuwedd, that she naturally would speak in dialogue with Sadia Pineda Hameed, commissioned to write in response to the same legend by contributing editor Alys Conran. What we didn’t know was that Rosy’s review essay would also weave a link with journalist Lorcán Lovett’s exploration of a fascinating – and largely unknown – pocket of Welsh heritage in the hills of north-east India . . . Though I’ll leave you to seek out that particular connection. Swansea-born and now an international reporter based in South East Asia, Lorcán’s story, uncovered with the help of Pulitzer-nominated photojournalist Valeria Mongelli, feels like an absolute boon for us, and I was so thrilled to be able to commission it.

Other editorial blessings include a specially commissioned offering from literary folk-horror legend Lucie McKnight Hardy, a tale of small-town social media gossip from emerging talent Jade E. Bradford, a story that surprised us all from Japan-based novelist Liam Hegarty, and an essay by Beirut-based journalist Jacob Russell, grounded in grief and the north Wales coast, that is, in my opinion, a masterclass in memoir.

And of course, there is an abundance of promise in these pages too. We have no fewer than five first publications in this issue, including a generation-spanning essay from Charlene Trino, a beautifully distilled work of autofiction from Trystan Ratcliffe, and two remarkably accomplished short stories from Martha Bowen and Lucie Donahue. I’m not exaggerating when I say that all of these submissions left an immediate and indelible mark on all of us during the anonymous reading process. Our fifth exciting debut is from Folding Rock’s first guest artist, Abby Poulson, who worked with contributing editor Joshua Jones to bring us both a multimedia exploration of Merlin’s legendary oak, but also a fresh and magnificently atmospheric cover for the issue, too.

It’s exactly a year since my co-editor Rob and I sat down to finalise our first editorial for Folding Rock. Three issues, hundreds of submissions, numerous events and forty-three original pieces of writing later and here we are at issue number four: our most ambitious yet. Make that fifty-nine new stories told.

In those first hopeful pages of our new magazine, we wrote about what we wanted Folding Rock to represent: a celebration of all we have to be proud of as a literary nation, without any kind of compromise on quality or creativity. Twelve months on I’m confident that, though many of the grander goals we set out with are still a work-in-progress (Caerleon wasn’t built in a day, etc.), these things absolutely stand. There is a treasure trove of talent springing from the bedrock, with no signs of running dry. So much to celebrate – and no compromise required.

Eventually, we’ll stop going on about this vision of ours – of a creatively booming, internationally respected, literary Wales – and simply let the writing speak for itself. But not yet. In the meantime, let the writing in this particular issue speak its multitudes. Fill your folklore boots – and enjoy the many, twisting forest paths these tales might lead you down.

 And so begins this branch.

–Kathryn Tann, March 2026