I truly care about Élan, and I hope that dedication is felt by future members. I want incoming students to see the hard work my peers and I accomplished during events like read-thrus, ArtWalk, Homecoming, Coffee House, and so on, and use that as a guide to propel this magazine forward. With each passing year, Élan is able to evolve the caliber of its works and its visibility in the local art scene, and it has been an honor knowing my efforts contributed to that. In Élan, we are a collective. In this group, at least, we recognize and respect its thirty-one year heritage. There’s no hesitation in putting aside personal differences to ensure the product we put out is worthy of our title, school, and identity: Élan International Literary Magazine, student-run by Douglas Anderson School of the Arts’ Creative Writing Program. It’s a great name—one that’s audibly aesthetic yet also has the history to back it up. I’ll admit it does sound like I’m laying it on really thick, but all of my praise is genuine. I’m incredibly thankful because Élan changed my life, no lie. The Élan legacy played a large part in shaping who I am today. Long story short, I was terribly insecure about my writing, all throughout middle school, and most of high school. I did have moments where I looked at something and thought, “Yeah, I wrote this, and no one else could’ve,” but for the most part, I didn’t think I had a place in this department. This insecurity was enough that I avoided confronting my cultures, fears, and identity in my own pieces. I was afraid of my voice. Élan gave me that voice. Being chosen for a position at this magazine showed me that I had potential. It told me that I had a place in this department, and that my voice mattered. Taking on a specific role with specific expectations conditioned me, in a good way. I learned what I was capable of, which was certainly more than I’d given myself credit for. Being in Élan in junior year grounded me. I felt closer to the department which gave me a safe atmosphere to write, and my confidence grew. I write this at the end of senior year, happy with who I am, thanks to Élan. It was at the beginning of this school year—about a year into my “job” at the magazine, that I felt comfortable enough to tell myself “stop.” Stop being scared of who you are. Stop blocking out the pain and sadness and distance you want to write about. Stop keeping good work from coming out (haha)! And that’s what I did. My confidence and writing improved because Élan awakened me, in the same way it did others before me, and I’m sure will continue to do. Even our adult sponsor, Tiffany Melanson, proudly states that Élan gave her her voice, when it was a voluntary after-school club. Today, she leads us, an actual class we come to every other day. Élan will continue to grow, as it inspires others to grow alongside it. -Seth Gozar - Co-Fiction Editor

I remember when I found myself on the Élan staff my Junior year, on the first day Mrs. Melanson asked us each to go around the room and say why we wanted to be apart of Élan. I have always been a shy person, quick to blend in and follow the crowd, but I wanted things to be different for me being on the Élan staff. I wanted to be a leader. I wanted to be apart of things and have my hands in a little bit of everything. I didn’t know how true that would end up being two years ago. I’ve been apart of a lot, but I consider Coffee House and being the Co-Lead of Community Engagement as being the biggest parts of my “career” in Élan. My first stake in Élan and what I hope to be my legacy was being the Junior Lead last year and Senior Lead this year of Coffee House, which is a collaborative show of 100% original work that Élan puts on every year. It sounds super nerdy, but I had so much fun organizing and managing the event and working with all the performers was such an eye-opening experience to get to be involved with all the different arts areas. I am forever thankful for the Senior Lead of Coffee House that year, which was Tatiana. She taught me everything I needed to know about how to make this show happen and managed to make it fun at the same time. So I was ecstatic when I was able to be in the same position and have the same close relationship with the Junior Lead this year, Oona and I can only hope that she will take everything I taught her and be able to turn around and teach her Junior Lead and so on and so forth. Coffee House is an event very near and dear to my heart and I’ve met a lot of great people through this show, so I am thrilled to have been apart of making it happen. My Junior year I was the Poetry Editor and while I loved this role and I loved being immersed in poetry and being apart of the production of the book, I didn’t feel like I was doing enough, so I think I really found my niche being one of the Community Engagement Managers along with Savana. Community Engagement has a lot of parts to it; there’s marketing, sales, community in relation to Douglas Anderson, our Jacksonville community, and then the community of literary magazines. Juggling all of this was a lot, but I loved getting to talk to people at events like Art Walk or Jax by Jax and spread my love for Élan and try to get people to care for it as much as I do. Our role was a newer creation. There has always been a need for it, but last year was the first year it was an official role, so it’s required a lot of figuring out and learning from our mistakes, but our mistakes will allow for whoever takes on the role next year to be even better. - Madison Dorsey - Co-Community Engagement Editor

The first time a poem came together for me, the words working with me rather than against me, the feeling of success and fulfillment confirmed that I am a poet. I struggled my whole life with getting words together in the way I wanted them to, so to know I had that superpower within me my whole life to express things I previously believed to be indescribable through imagery and poetic devices changed my life. I began carrying myself with more confidence and stopped invalidating my personal truths and experiences. This not only allowed my true voice to come out and helped me confront things I’d run from my whole life, but also allowed my peers and friends to be affected by my work as well. Élan has provided me the room to share my passion for poetry to a wider audience. I no longer feel like I’m loving poetry in a vacuum. I had the opportunity to visit the creative writing club of Kirby-Smith Middle School to help with workshops, and each visit, I saw the two girls I worked with most light up when I entered the room, invite me over, eagerly show me their newest work and revisions. Their enthusiasm is genuinely a reason for me to continue living and writing even when I feel discouraged. The beneficial relationship I built with the girls is mutual- I helped them with poetry, hopefully fostering a deeper love or appreciation for words within them, and they gave me hope for the future of writing and Élan. Being the poetry editor has enabled me to reach out to so many people and make poetry more accessible through workshops and class visits throughout the school year, and I want to leave behind this legacy of connection. Through creating poem-in-a-pocket handouts for Artwalk booths and book festivals and leading the creation of the National Poetry Month reading at the 5 & Dime, I’ve extended my passion for poetry to others to build Élan’s presence in the local writing community. Hearing people discussing the poems performed at the 5 & Dime, hearing the small gasps and approving grunts amongst a silent attentive audience in response to powerful imagery and language means the world to me. Seeing people’s faces light up as I talk about poetry with them amongst a crowd of people at events like Artwalk affirms that I am fulfilling my role as poetry editor and planting my legacy of interaction and passion behind in those I’ve reached out to. As Élan grows and evolves, I hope my love for the craft of poetry is carried on through National Poetry Month events and workshops and class visitations. One cannot create in a vacuum, and one cannot exist in a vacuum. Poetry has the power to connect and resonate with people so it needs to be shared and talked about. Future poetry editors will hopefully consider this with everything they do so they can maximize poetry’s impact through their passion. - Gabriella Christenson, Poetry Editor

I hope that the motivation to encapsulate the essence of Elan remains within my legacy. As the Layout and Design Editor it is my job, with the junior editor, to bring about the physical book, whether it be online and in print. It needs to come alive, and have a face, and become a home for the work of many emerging writers and artists who want to share their words. It is an important duty, and the process takes much time and effort and meticulous review, and in the end having that physical book in your hand is one of the sweetest things that can be received. This is because you work for the book. And I want the legacy I leave is that you’re going to need to work hard for the book, because the people who share their artistry with us work hard. They weave their experiences, knowledge, and questions into the work that is produced. So it is our job to work hard for these young voices that have pushed themselves, because there is in vulnerability in sending off work to anyone. When I first came into Elan, I wasn’t aware of the weight of these things. Of course nobody can be completely aware to anything until they actually become entangled deeply with something. I became Layout and Design Editor originally because I like to work with the aesthetics of things, and be a part of the conceptualization of a creative process. And I did learn how to do these things, and to teach these things because those who come after me need to be a seed that has taken root. I became very close to the process of how the art and writing is selected, and how these things exist in this space of this book and there needs to be a balance of these pieces, as well as room to breathe and reflect that is offered up within these pages as well. The people who submit work to any publication, are putting their trust in us, that if we do pick their work to be showcased, that it will be respected and loved the same way that the creator respected and loved the work. There is the notion, that it is exchanging hands in a sense, because that is how art is circulated. It moves from one place to the next until someone else obtains it, and then really absorbs it, and then shares is genuinely to others, and with love. Art is one of the purest forms of human expression. It is beautifully aware, as well clueless, art has all the answers and then in the same moment, only questions. The legacy of Elan that I want to share, is that fact, that in the end, we are all creators, and we are all a part of the larger human narrative, and there is pride in having the ability to combine many difference experiences, and thought processes, and have them converge in one place that can really inspire another. The cyclic process of creation can only be fed if it is able to be shared. And if people feel like they have the means to share. – Kiara Ivey, Senior Layout and Design Editor

I consider myself extremely lucky to have been a member of the Élan staff for the last 2 years; I started on this staff as a Submissions editor, and am leaving it as the first Managing Editor, and have (hopefully) helped Élan grow as both a magazine and as an enterprise for artistic experiences within the Jacksonville community. Working on the Élan staff has definitely shaped how I view myself and how I view what I am capable of doing. A lot of the event-related duties I participated in required, not just responsibility, but also the ability to meet deadlines, work interpersonally, and execute ideas. It was, at times, a lot of pressure, but as a result, I am surer of myself as an editor and as a communicator. When I joined the staff in the fall of 2015, I did not anticipate the enormity of the tasks that the Élan staff is in charge of. Making a book is a lot easier in discussion than in practice, and the fundraising necessary to create a book is something I had completely overlooked initially. The Managing Editor position was created this year largely because the needs of Élan continued to expand beyond what previous staff positions encompassed. I am proud to have been the first, and am proud to have helped fill the needs of Élan. If nothing else, I hope I have left behind groundwork for future Managing Editors to help work between different staff members, and ease the general process of creating Élan issues, as well as events. I hope that I have left behind the skeleton to make Homecoming (a major fundraiser for Élan) bigger and better every year. I hope I have, as a staff member, helped develop and bolster the Élan brand within our local, as well as international community. I hope I have also helped the Élan print and online issues continue to grow aesthetically, as well as help the Editors-in-Chief and Layout and Design Editors enact their visions. As I pass on the Managing Editor position, I would like to say that I learned through a lot of trial and error, and am extremely grateful to Mrs. Melanson (our Faculty Advisor), Christina Sumpter (my fellow 2015-2016 Submissions Editor), and Makinley Dozier (2016-2017 Submissions Editor) for being infinitely supportive. I would also like to thank the entire 2015-2017 Élan Staff for allowing me to learn and work alongside them. Additionally, I would like to extend a thank you to everyone who has read my blog posts, and allowed me to read their submissions and help publish their work—and I would like to especially thank everyone who reads and buys our issues. I truly could not have done it without you. PROMPT— Write a thank-you letter to someone who you appreciate but wouldn’t normally thank or haven’t thanked in the past (bus driver, crossing guard, parent, teacher, counselor, custodian, coworker, friend, etc.). Minimum 200 words. – Zarra Marlowe, Managing Editor

Olivia Ragan attends Denver School of the Arts in Denver, Colorado. Currently, what role does art play in your life? Currently, I read just as much as I write - I find that writer's block comes far more often when I don't read. I also listen to music frequently, especially when I am writing. As for my own art, even if I don't pursue writing as a career, I think I will write for the rest of my life. I've been writing for years now and it has helped me through . Writing is my favorite outlet for stress and creative energy. What was your inspiration for your winning piece? When I wrote this piece, it was raining outside, and I was thinking of all the unfinished knitting/sewing projects my grandmother has. This was about the same time that the e key came off of the keyboard of the computer I use at school. The weather is a huge source of inspiration for me, and I write a lot about seasons when the weather starts to noticeably change. I especially love the transition from winter to spring, and that inspires a lot of writing I do. The rain and the computer and my grandmother's knitting combined in my head as I listened to music by Regina Spektor, leading me to write this poem. What is your process for creating art? I write to prompts or to workshops I receive in class, or I write while listening to music on my own. After the rough draft of a piece is complete, I don't look at the piece for a week or so and return to it with fresh eyes. I usually edit a piece two or three times before showing it to anybody. If I am dedicated to a piece and still unsatisfied, I send it to a friend of mine and they critique it. I edit it a final time with their suggestions. I didn't have anybody else critique this piece before I submitted it to Élan. Do you have any tips for budding artists? Well, inspiration can really come from anywhere. And when an idea comes, it is best to write everything out while you can, or write the idea down if you can't so you won't forget. It is also really important to read. If you want to write poetry, read good poetry, and it will make the writing process much smoother.

Maya Halko is a 16-year old student that attends Chicago High School for the Arts. Currently, what role does art play in your life? The starring role. My art practice is what I continue to work on every day, and there are so many other artists inspiring me all the time and encourage me to try new things and keep moving forward. I'm so excited for the future and what I can do next with artwork! The more I make, the more I continue to understand myself and what I enjoy most. What was your inspiration for your winning piece? My piece takes place at a farmers' market in downtown Chicago. Since pigeons rule this city and aren’t afraid of approaching people, they might as well be citizens of Chicago too. I incorporated the hybridization between the human figure and pigeons to add a sense of light humor. The colors of the piece also reflect on how I felt during the time; I walked past the location of that farmer’s market every day while making this piece. It was super peachy. What is your process for creating art? I need to get to know my own painting. Usually if I spend enough time with it and keep working, I begin to understand what I want to convey more and more. More than anything recently I’ve been focusing on colors. It's relaxing to mix paint. I'm also turning a wall of my room into an inspiration board, or a ‘soup’ board. The soup board contains snippets of things I want my art to look like (or things I enjoy), small color studies, and lists of things that I have to get done. These are all the ingredients I have for my soup. Do you have any tips for budding artists? Balance out the larger, long term pieces you make with many refreshing, shorter drawings. That way you’re giving your eyeballs a break and making more things. Find your favorite artists and stare at their paintings long enough to steal their pretty colors. If you like a certain piece, keep it out in the open so you can enjoy it! Don't forget to stretch every hour if you've been sitting, my aching back pays for this. Draw on napkins.

The swamps of Florida. The snaking rivers of South Carolina. The jagged, clustered crannies of Appalachia. The humid pine smell of New Hampshire. When I think back on my experiences, I remember less the moods of the people, or the taste of food we ate, compared to the places I inhabited, even briefly. It’s hard to describe how much the natural world relates to my writing. I became obsessed with the crazy logic of ecology after spending a summer week kayaking, studying the sand banks, the deer tracks, the slick growth on river rocks, the schools of fish darting beneath my paddle, the patches of kelp knitting a dense forest in the toughest currents. My brain, six or seven hours a day without technology or books or conversation, took in every detail, and began to notice how quietly, but profoundly every passing molecule could be traced to every organism in those rivers. The pockets of moisture trapped in rocks as the levels lowered were just as essential to what I saw as the current of the water. I’m not going to say that writing is like an ecosystem. That diction is like the algae, and characters are like the currents. My inspiration did not come so suddenly and with such blatant simile. Rather, when my focus shifted from looking at the world around me and thinking about a whole, observant of all the billions of steps and lives required to reach a single outcome, I became overwhelmed with the need to keep writing. When I wrote, not only could I suddenly be back in some of the most vivid places of my memories, but I could be part of all those tiny systems and lives not exposed in our day-to-day lives. Those days on rivers, and since then, my continued informal observations in ecology, environmental science, and animal behavior, have shown me a taste of how vast the world is. If I confined my learning to the typical high school guidelines: finishing teacher assignments, memorizing rules or events, I would stay stuck in studying the world in segregated, bound pieces. Writing is how I look at the people, the materials, the environment as a whole around me, and weave it all together. Connect the algae to the currents. Point out the tiniest details in my experience, and bring attention to a whole life or pattern otherwise unnoticed. Nature is not just a part of writing to me. Nature is a lesson in why to write, how to write. How to take the micro and the macro, and lead other people to see the tiniest of pictures existing inside the biggest ideas. -Ana Shaw, Junior Editor-in-Chief

Nature and writing have the same long beautiful process. The years it takes to grow a tree, the bee that pollinates the flowers, a lake so vast, but so small all at once. In nature I am constantly reminded just how small we are, how there is a much bigger picture than my tiny problems, this process humbles my writing. After seeing something so simple, and beautiful my work expands to reach out to more than just what I am feeling. Nature inspires me to write for others. Often I write based on my own personal truths, but realizing that each personal truth has a universal experience if the right elements are added, makes poetry that much stronger. Poetry is writing with color. Sensory detail and texture can make an okay poem great. Nature is the land of color. Taking a moment to sit outside one can see things they take for granted in everyday life. The sun peeking through the trees, the ant carrying a crumb on his back, a flower coming to full bloom. Natures distinct sound, makes it hard not to be inspired. Some of my best work has come from questioning the soil I plant my feet in to. Who was here before me? What stories were told? Is this land a place once filled with horror? Or is this land a place filled with happiness?  Who has the right to this land? What gives land the right to be owned? Looking at nature as what it was rather than what it has become is a great way to think of writing. It’s bellow the surface that the story really begins to shape. Nature is also a reminder that with out us, the sun will still rise, the waves will still crash along the shore, life will go on. That is the impact I strive for my words. Something that once when I am gone, is a legacy I can leave behind. We still study the works of great artist who have passed, with out their art what would be remembered? A great poetry prompt from writingforward.com “A young girl and her mother walk to the edge of a field kneel down in the grass and plant a tree.” Imagine why they might be planting the tree, is this a ritual or a first time? What are the dynamics of their relationship? Use imagery and diction to really convey the moment. –Mary Feimi, Editor-in-Chief

Reading poetry is one of the most important aspects of being able to create your own. You could just constantly create and figure out how to improve using some version of trial-and-error, but the consumption of poetry allows for technical exploration and understanding, and most importantly, it can give you permission to say what needs to be said. The first poet I ever fell in love with was Edgar Allen Poe. I know, I know: All the rhyme and meter and death - how could anyone like that, right? But the thing about Poe is that he was never afraid to write his truth. The man had a bad life, let’s be real, so of course his poetry is macabre and melancholy. Whenever I read his work, I see it in colors - dark blues and scarlet reds, undertones of grey and black. He has a consistency to all of his work, where many other poets experiment with a vast array of forms and techniques, so if you read a piece, you’ll know if it’s Poe. And I liked that bold statement and adherence to identity. He was never afraid to write about the pretty dead girls or the anxiety surrounding murder; he himself had loved an Annabel Lee; he, too, had felt an oppressive anxiety about the world. On the flipside of this true-to-life poetry coin is Katha Pollitt. Talk about an odd couple. Just as I admire Poe for sticking to his guns, I admire Pollitt for the same reason. Coming from journalism, she has a simplistic, yet hard-hitting style of writing which is unlike virtually every other poet I’ve read. Combine that with her strong, feministic outlook on life, and you’ve got a real winner. One of my favorite poems by her is about Martha and Mary Magdalene, in which she subverts typical views of women and their roles as either temptress or servant. She points out Jesus’ hypocrisy in performing selectively timed miracles, as he doesn’t give Martha an opportunity to sit and listen to him speak. In typical Christian analyses of this situation, Martha is often shamed - even by Jesus himself in the Bible - for not taking a break and hearing what he has to say. Pollitt takes this perspective and uses it to highlight the worship of men and denigration of women in a patriarchal society such as ours. She’s a poet unafraid of backlash and judgment; she, like the subjects of many of her pieces, is a woman unfazed by the opinions of others; she’s a friend to and advocate of truth. Some of my other favorite poets include Charles Bukowski, Maya Angelou, Marilyn Chin, and of course, the odd little balloon man himself, e.e. cummings. The thing I love most about poetry is the diversity through form, dialect, personal experience, and every other element involved in being an artist. Reading poetry allows us to see life through hundreds of lenses, each their own tint and thickness, and enlightens us to the injustice, beauty, and folly of being alive. In these confusing and bitter times, we can all learn something from the craft of poetry: Our differences are what make us whole. Martha by Katha Pollitt Well, did he think the food would cook itself? Naturally, he preferred the sexy one, the one who leaned forward with velvet eyes and asked clever questions that showed she’d done the reading. You’ll notice he didn’t summon up a picnic so that I could put up my feet and hear how lilies do nothing but shine in God’s light. God’s movie star, he says we stand in glory, we are loved like sparrows, like grains of sand: there are so many of us! He means he stands, he is loved. The music wells up in a dark theater: a kiss, a kill, a tumult of clouds and cymbals! We lift our hands, we weep, we don’t deserve him. I don’t deserve him. I’m all wrong, I’m nothing, hurrying home in my raincoat and practical shoes. The sky won’t speak to me. But still, somebody’s got to care about the tablecloth, and the bread, and the wine. –Mackenzie Steele, Art Editor

I’ve lived in the same house since I was six years old. As I was growing up and beginning to write, I was discovering the world at the same time, often through the same outlet. I’d find myself walking around my backyard, which is an acre of woodsy land, looking for inspiration. One day I came across a tree I hadn’t seen before; it was huge, with the perfect dip in the grass at the base of the trunk for me to lay a blanket down and stretch across with a notebook. That spot quickly became a safe haven for me, where I would escape to journal about my day or write to distract my mind. I started out by writing cheesy love songs. I’d lean against the tree, staring up at the branches touching the sky, and write sappy songs about it. Eventually the songs turned into poems, and I needed more to write about than just leaves and the sky, so I started writing about my own life. However, even though I may have found new places to bring inspiration and experience into my writing from, a piece of that spot has always been present in my writing. I continued going out there, encouraging myself to write outside. Not only did the tree spark ideas within me, it was also a quiet place for me to find peace of mind, and relish in it. My home has always been pretty hectic, so that escape was something I really needed to get somewhere personal and intimate in my writing. Even today, I think nature is extremely prevalent in my writing, whether I purposely implement it or not. I wrote a poem about the relationship between a mother and a daughter, and how deep their relationship truly went. Woven throughout the poem was a metaphor of the daughter being a plant that her mother, a gardening hand, was tending to; she was trying to prune her into perfection. Often, I read through a piece I’m working on and notice some form of symbolism or metaphor that I hadn’t even purposely used, but it makes the poem or story all the more powerful. That’s what amazes me about nature; it’s always there, it’s often ignored or taken for granted, but it always finds a way to weave itself into the deeper meaning of everything, to have purpose in writing, and in our lives. Throughout my years in Creative Writing programs, I’ve often been asked if I have a favorite place to write, or thing to write about. Each time the question is posed, my tree is the first thing that comes to mind. It doesn’t matter if I’m writing about it or not, I’m still writing because of it. After ten years, it still manages to inspire me. Now, when I have a rough day, I still find myself walking to the end of my property with a blanket and a notebook, ready to sit down and wait for the inspiration to hit me. It almost always does. -Kinley Dozier, Website/Submissions Editor

I write poetry to tell little stories. As someone who prefers fiction, I use my poems to explore the emotions I can’t access through prose. I find that poetry allows me to be more vulnerable—it’s more effective to infuse and explore personal bits of me without having to worry too much about character development and plot. My favorite part of poetry is imagery. I love describing objects and people. It’s fun to find adjectives and verbs to convey how both readers and I should feel about something. Imagery has so many effective, interesting aspects. In my case, diction, syntax, and images go hand-in-hand. It’s quite an effort—and one that’s worth it—to find the right words that not only creates the right emotional images, but also the sound and feel. For example, I once wrote a poem about a dying light bulb. Instead of saying “dim light shines on me,” I took the time to revise several times until I found a satisfactory line: “Light spills/across skin, fumbles/silent/and cool.” This line expresses the isolation of both the speaker and the bulb, which itself is a metaphor for watching someone die without an emotional connection. The aspect of figurative language also plays in my quest for great, emotionally-raw images. I’ve mentioned metaphors already, but similes are just as important. I once wrote a poem talking about a hangnail, and what I compared it to really drew some reactions from people (which is what I wanted): “The last time my index fingernail snagged/on a thread and ripped into/pale-pink pricking muscle,/I cried out—/watched clear shell split easy/like Tupperware left in the sun.” There’s also something I got a lesson on this year, but found that I’ve attempted it many, many times before—synesthesia. Most people use their five senses (sight, touch, taste, smell, hearing,) to process objects. Synesthesia takes that reliance and plays on it with adjectives and verbs that deliberately contrast a specific sense—while still using that sense—to create a lasting emotional impact. For example, if someone ate a cherry that was fresh, but maybe reminded him of a broken relationship, it could be described as having “...velveted skin/peeling crunchy, sweet-tart sparks/pricking his tongue.” I guess my love for images comes from my love for grotesqueness. I love piling images on images to describe things in great detail, which I credit to one of my favorite authors, Ray Bradbury. But enough about fiction for now. I was first introduced to poetry in elementary school, when we covered classic American poets like Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost. The first poems I heard/read were Dickinson’s “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” and Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.” I remember being taken aback at the frankness of these poems, and how they described things so simply yet beautiful. I still read their poetry now, although I can say that I’ve found many, many more poets that inspire me to keep going. -Seth Gozar, Co-Fiction Editor