Day by day, tweet by tweet, it often feels like our world is run on hate. Invective. Cruelty and sadism. But is it possible the greatest and most powerful force is love? In the newest issue of this acclaimed series, Freeman'sLove asks this question, bringing together literary heavyweights like Richard Russo, Anne Carson, Sandra Cisneros, Louise Erdrich, Haruki Murakami, Tommy Orange and Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk alongside emerging writers such as Andres Felipe Solano and Semezdin Mehmedinovic.Together, the pieces comprise a stunning exploration of the complexities of love, tracing it from its earliest stirrings, to the forbidden places where it emerges against reason, to loss so deep it changes the color of perception. In a time of contentiousness and flagrant abuse, this issue promises what only love can bring: a balm of complexity and warmth.

John Freeman was the editor of Granta until 2013. His books include The Tyranny of Email, Dictionary of the Undoing and How to Read a Novelist; a trilogy of anthologies about inequality including Tales of Two Americas and Tales of Two Planets; and the poetry collections Maps and The Park. The executive editor at Literary Hub, he teaches at New York University and in Paris.