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CONCORD, N.H. — <\/span>In 1985, a 13-year-old girl in New Zealand spotted a pair of purple, lip-shaped sunglasses in \u201cYoung Miss\u201d magazine. In March, I traveled 9,000 miles from New Hampshire to deliver them to her, finally fulfilling my pen pal\u2019s decades-old request.<\/p>\n International Youth Service, the agency that matched us up 40 years ago, has long since folded, but other pen pal programs have survived \u2014 or even began during \u2014 the internet age. And even though New Zealand’s postal system has reduced home delivery days, Denmark has stopped delivering letters<\/a> altogether and Canada is moving in that direction<\/a>, some see signs of a letter-writing resurgence.<\/p>\n \u201cThe hunger is there,\u201d said Rachel Syme, a writer for The New Yorker magazine who created a pen pal program during the COVID-19 pandemic and later published a book encouraging others to take up handwritten correspondence.<\/p>\n More than 15,000 people signed up for Syme\u2019s Penpalooza project in 2020, and she still gets hundreds of takers when she coordinates a new round of matchmaking every few months. She also gets requests for pen pals at book signings for \u201cSyme\u2019s Letter Writer \u2013 A Guide to Modern Correspondence,\u201d and the stationery stores she frequents in New York City are always crowded with customers.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are very interested in physical, analog things right now,\u201d she said. \u201cI think it really has an appeal especially to a younger generation who grew up with a phone glued to their hand, to do something that\u2019s more tactile, slower, more intentional, more mindful, but also just disconnected from the internet in every way.\u201d<\/p>\n I was still 10 years away from connecting to the internet when I opened my first aerogramme from New Zealand, a sheet of pale blue paper that served as both writing surface and envelope adorned with a 45-cent stamp. That missive ended with a formal \u201cYours (hopefully) Molly Nunns,\u201d but within a year, she was signing off with \u201cLots and lots of love\u201d or \u201cYour friend forever.\u201d<\/p>\n In letter after letter, Molly drew little hearts on the tails of y\u2019s in both of our first names, asked for updates on my middle school crushes and shared stories about her classmates and family. I could clearly picture her life, though it was hard in snowy New Hampshire to imagine celebrating Christmas during the summer.<\/p>\n \u201cI am thinking of you heaps and I wonder what you are doing because you\u2019re a SUPER pen friend and I hope that we never stop writing to each other and that one day we will get to meet each other,\u201d she wrote in early 1986.<\/p>\n Julie Delbridge, 65, fostered similar friendships after joining International Pen Friends as a teenager in 1979. Writing to pen pals in more than a dozen countries from her home in Australia was such a positive experience that she began working for the organization as an adult and took over as its president in 2001. While she loved sharing photos, postcards and treats with her pen friends, it also was a therapeutic experience at a time when her parents were going through a bitter divorce.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a pastime that I totally immersed myself into in a positive way and gained a lot of enjoyment from,\u201d she said. \u201cThere was an abundance of non-judgmental friendship, fun and different perspectives.\u201d<\/p>\n Over its 59-year history, IPF has provided pen pals to more than 2 million people ages 8 to 80+, she said. Membership peaked in the late 1990s but surged again during the pandemic, and this year, there\u2019s been an increase in people ages 21-26 joining.<\/p>\n In 2021, the U.S. Postal Service sent cards and envelopes to 25,000 elementary school classrooms for a pen pal project, but older students also are putting pen to paper.<\/p>\n In Texas, a group of medical students created an anonymous pen pal program to promote peer support and personal reflection. At Villanova University, professor Kamran Javadizadeh requires students to send letters to each other as part of a literature class called \u201cLetters, Texts, Twitter\u201d that examines different forms of epistolary communication in literature.<\/p>\n \u201cI make them put pieces of paper in envelopes and take them to the post office and send them to each other even though they could just as easily hand it to the person in class,\u201d he said. \u201cSomething is lost when you have instantaneous communication. So I\u2019m interested in the relationship between synchronous kinds of intimacy and asynchronous forms of intimacy.\u201d<\/p>\n Gordon Alley-Young, dean of communications at New York\u2019s Kingsborough Community College, believes letters are like vinyl records \u2014 they\u2019re coming back into fashion as young people explore a tangible medium from the past. He has both studied the history of letter writing and used it to teach students empathy. <\/p>\n In an interpersonal communication class, he noticed that students analyzing case studies about relationship problems offered matter-of-fact, almost insensitive diagnoses. But when he re-wrote the case studies in the form of letters from friends and had students respond in kind, they began sharing their own feelings and offering more open-ended advice.<\/p>\n \u201cWe really want students to connect to what they\u2019re looking at,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd letter writing encourages that.\u201d<\/p>\n An app called Slowly seeks to combine modern technology with the old-fashioned anticipation inherent to the pen pal relationship. Users send messages digitally, but delivery is delayed from an hour to several days to mimic snail mail.<\/p>\n \u201cThis delay naturally encourages longer, more thoughtful messages because you wouldn\u2019t just say \u2018hi\u2019 if you know you have to wait days for a reply,\u201d said cofounder JoJo Chan.<\/p>\n Since 2017, the app has gained 10 million users in more than 160 countries, most in their 20s and 30s. One user said he was curious about pen pals after hearing about them from his grandparents, Chan said.<\/p>\n \u201cSlowly offers a convenient way and a modern way for them to try that experience,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Syme, however, is all about the tangible aspects of letter writing. Her book includes advice on paper and pens plus all kinds of goodies that can be tucked into envelopes.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is joy to be had once you fully embrace the medium\u2019s outdated extravagance,\u201d she writes.<\/p>\n But letter writing, she said in an interview, is like a swimming pool, both shiny and deep. The frippery and embellishments don\u2019t matter in comparison to what you actually put on the page.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s where I think it can get very real, very quickly,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Molly and I had been writing for 15 years by the time we met in person, spending a day together in New York when she toured the U.S. in May 2000. We crossed paths in London a few years later, and in 2018, she and her family visited New Hampshire. <\/p>\n \u201cWho would have thought when we started writing in 1985 that one day you\u2019d be sitting here? It\u2019s quite amazing,\u201d she said during my recent visit. \u201cWe\u2019ll always have a special connection, I\u2019m sure.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to the sunglasses, I also gave Molly a bound book of 200 pages of her letters that I scanned and printed. At age 13, I never could have imagined that someday I\u2019d have searchable PDFs of our teenage scribblings that could be summarized in 10 seconds by artificial intelligence. But what amazes me more is the depth of the connection I felt during our tearful airport goodbye.<\/p>\n We will for sure meet again. Until then, lots and lots of love, Holly.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n