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CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Back in 1985, a teenager in New Zealand became enamored with a quirky pair of purple, lip-shaped sunglasses she saw in “Young Miss” magazine. Fast forward to March, and I journeyed 9,000 miles from New Hampshire to finally present them to her, fulfilling a request made by my pen pal decades ago.
The organization that initially connected us, International Youth Service, has long since ceased operations. However, pen pal programs have endured and even thrived in the digital age. Despite the reduction in postal service deliveries in New Zealand, Denmark halting letter deliveries altogether, and Canada heading in a similar direction, there are signs of a revival in letter writing.
“There’s definitely a craving for it,” said Rachel Syme, a writer for The New Yorker who launched a pen pal initiative during the COVID-19 pandemic. She later authored a book encouraging others to embrace the art of handwritten letters.
In 2020, over 15,000 individuals joined Syme’s Penpalooza initiative, and each time she organizes a new matchmaking round, hundreds more eagerly participate. Requests for pen pals frequently arise at her book signings for “Syme’s Letter Writer – A Guide to Modern Correspondence,” and the stationery shops she visits in New York are bustling with shoppers.
“People are really drawn to tangible, analog experiences right now,” she noted. “It seems particularly appealing to younger generations, who grew up constantly connected to their phones, to engage in something more tactile, slower-paced, deliberate, and mindful, yet entirely disconnected from the digital world.”
“Yours (hopefully)”
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 “Yours (hopefully) Molly Nunns,” but within a year, she was signing off with “Lots and lots of love” or “Your friend forever.”
In letter after letter, Molly drew little hearts on the tails of y’s 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.
“I am thinking of you heaps and I wonder what you are doing because you’re 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,” she wrote in early 1986.
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.
“It was a pastime that I totally immersed myself into in a positive way and gained a lot of enjoyment from,” she said. “There was an abundance of non-judgmental friendship, fun and different perspectives.”
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’s been an increase in people ages 21-26 joining.
Pen pals in the classroom
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.
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 “Letters, Texts, Twitter” that examines different forms of epistolary communication in literature.
“I 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,” he said. “Something is lost when you have instantaneous communication. So I’m interested in the relationship between synchronous kinds of intimacy and asynchronous forms of intimacy.”
Gordon Alley-Young, dean of communications at New York’s Kingsborough Community College, believes letters are like vinyl records — they’re 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.
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.
“We really want students to connect to what they’re looking at,” he said. “And letter writing encourages that.”
Pen pals in the digital age
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.
“This delay naturally encourages longer, more thoughtful messages because you wouldn’t just say ‘hi’ if you know you have to wait days for a reply,” said cofounder JoJo Chan.
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.
“Slowly offers a convenient way and a modern way for them to try that experience,” she said.
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.
“There is joy to be had once you fully embrace the medium’s outdated extravagance,” she writes.
But letter writing, she said in an interview, is like a swimming pool, both shiny and deep. The frippery and embellishments don’t matter in comparison to what you actually put on the page.
“That’s where I think it can get very real, very quickly,” she said.
A special connection
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.
“Who would have thought when we started writing in 1985 that one day you’d be sitting here? It’s quite amazing,” she said during my recent visit. “We’ll always have a special connection, I’m sure.”
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’d 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.
We will for sure meet again. Until then, lots and lots of love, Holly.