Creative Colloquy asks you, dear reader, to consider why you read and write. Why do we take up the pen or tentatively turn page after page of our dog-eared books, if not to build community, compassion and empathy where there was none before? Why allow ourselves to get lost in the beauty and mystery of stories when "real life" awaits us beyond the dust jacket? The answer is simple: our words give us hope. Hope that a world where barriers we've built between reality and dream, the strange and safely familiar and fallacies of black vs. white can still be broken down by the power of our words. Creative Colloquy Volume Four, an anthology of short stories, poetry and narrative writing by local scribes of western Washington, seeks to keep that hope alive among the literary community. Volume Four features eighteen original works by hopeful storytellers, each accompanied by artwork provided by creative artists using charcoal, collage, paint, photography, and digital media for your reading pleasure. Take a moment to slide your hands across the cover of Creative Colloquy Volume Four, press your thumb against its slender spine and feel each and every story as you flip through its pages. Feel our stories, and feel hope with us.