As the emergency of the spring 2020 semester ended and the uncertainty of the summer began, we commiserated—in text messages, on Zoom calls, and sitting many feet apart in each other’s yards—about our feelings of disconnection and our inability to focus on anything other than the pandemic. The scholarship we had started before the pandemic hit seemed far less urgent in light of COVID. Instead of forcing ourselves to ignore the pandemic in our work and forge on with our existing projects, we decided to use our academic energies to face the crisis directly. Working from our expertise in reflective writing (Lesley) and public memory (Laura), we designed the Iowa State University Quarantine Journal Project (hereafter QJP).