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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

I’m always writing about soil, and water, and trees, and places that revolve around these things. I never intend on the first go round with a first draft of prose or a poem to add those things, but it always seems to happen. One of my favorite poems I’ve written, is in which feminine perspective in regards to the loss of societal control over one’s body is shared. The voice that houses this perspective is encased in lotus flowers, as I offer up another version of the section of Homer’s Odyssey, where Odysseus comes across the island of the lotus eaters. Ironically, I’m currently writing a short story in which a man loses his wife to the sea, and now he’s haunted by siren song that drives him to madness. I know both of these pieces seem mystical, and are based off of supernatural creatures and stories, but I suppose that’s because the natural elements that construct them feel supernatural themselves. That’s probably why all the great, old, and dead writers people study probably wrote about running around in the forest, being in awe of everything. I think I’m always subconsciously adding the natural world into my work because I am subconsciously always trying to explain things bigger than myself. The thing that is bigger than me can be societal expectations and the span of time from which they grew, or it can be racial commentary, or a good old existential/spiritual questioning. This is easy for me to do, combining nature in my pieces, because nature is something that always has been and always will be bigger than people. Even though man manipulates the earth, the rocks, the water, and the trees, the Earth will still be here, regenerating itself long after people are gone. The natural world is like a phoenix. No matter how many times it comes to the brink, no matter what occurs within it and upon it, with time, it will heal itself. Nature is a balanced thing. Humans disrupt that balance. Then there’s chaos. So I think that juxtaposition itself too, draws me to use nature. It’s like the stories we’ve heard of people taking things from the land they aren’t supposed to, facing great consequences. Humanity has built itself up to think that we are the best thing there is to offer, that we are all there is, when in reality, a hurricane can destroy us so simply, and with such ease. Earthquakes swallow us up like old gods waking up from a nap. It’s insane to think about, how perfectly constructed it all is. If you have nature and people at war with each other, man may seem to win, but there’s always the underlying knowledge that we are so temporary compared to everything else. The land only needs itself, it never ever needed us, and on the occasions it does, it’s only because we have compromised it in a way that makes our own conscious feel heavier. Nature is all powerful. It is reliable. It is something that cannot be questioned. That is why I feel the need to incorporate it into my words, because I want my words to be like that, even if sometimes I don’t know it. It’s beautiful and unknown and an enigma we can see and cannot see at the same time. I think I crave the balance. That’s why there’s always rolling waves, or petals, or soil birthing new life in my words. –Kiara Ivey, Layout and Design Editor

I was outside a lot as a kid; my dad took me to the woods, my grandma took me to the swamp, and I took up the habit of reading outside, beneath the adolescent peach trees we planted before moving from South Carolina. Not only did being outdoors afford me a wicked tan, but my contact with nature throughout my childhood has given me a foundation of ideas to spout from in my writing. Emotionally, nature has a lot to offer in writing. As a general example, weather can impact a scene’s tone as strongly as making a character explicitly weep. The sun brings happiness. The heat brings stagnancy. The storm brings violence. The rain brings rejuvenation. But, to step even deeper, it helps me to draw from personal experience with nature in order to create a stronger emotional output within my writing. Nature, for me, tends to be a communicative setting that my characters or poetic speakers interact with in a way that brings up certain childhood memories. I have written many times about one place called Kingsley Lake; if you live in North Florida, you may have heard of it, but otherwise, it’s a body unknown to most. This lake is where I have spent a week from each of my summers since I was nine. It’s a place where I feel safe, detached from the world, and uninterrupted. In other words, it’s pretty zen there, aside from the sunburns. But what can I write about this place when it feels entirely positive? There is always some meat to an experience if you ponder it long enough. In my poem “Kingsley Lake Escape” (which you can read in Élan: Fall 2016 Online Edition at https://elanlitmag.org/issues/archives/), I had to dig for the reality of being at Kingsley Lake, and in doing so, I discovered how scared I am of leaving that place every year to return to reality. To communicate this idea, the natural aspects of the setting can be manipulated and interpreted in order to portray the appropriate emotions to match the intention. The main aspect of the lake that I focused on in the poem was the water, in its bathwater-like serenity that I wanted to communicate the calm of chilling in the lake. But there are a lot of other aspects of nature at the lake that I didn’t mention in the poem: the tree whose leaves spill over the lake house during bad storms, the sand that stains your feet beige by the end of the second day, and the heat lightning that silently lights up the sky when night rolls around and the air cools accordingly. In settings, nature can be used to make the reader feel almost any emotion; you just have to be willing to make the sensation personal, and in doing so, allow yourself to write from your own experiences with storms, forests, and other natural occurrences that hold emotional potential to draw from. -Logan Monds, Co-Social Media Editor

Poetry seems to be a sort of elusive creature to a lot of people. When people read poetry it seems to slip right past them, the words on the page cluttering together and then becoming a smaller and smaller dot on the page until they are almost nothing, the meaning gone with the readers want to find meaning, and writing it can be very much the same way. You don’t know what you are writing until it is out there on the page and even then, you find yourself wondering “what even is this?” or “am I okay?” But, in the words of poet Li-Young Lee “a poem is like a score for the human voice.” Poetry may be elusive, and will confound us at times, but it cannot be denied that when truly and thoroughly read poetry is a universal language in which all our souls connect and speak in. Thoroughly written, it becomes a language for us to explore our own selves, and by extent, other people as well. Therefore when posed with the question of what inspires my poetry, I have to say that I think that everything inspires my poetry, even things that I don’t know inspire it. If you were to ask me two years ago what I thought about poetry, and what inspired me I couldn’t have given you an answer. That is because poetry was still an elusive beast to me, and I had yet to unlock the deep emotional connection with my writing that it takes to write it. I only began to write poetry, and get inspiration for it, when I realized that there was something deep within myself that begged to be explored and heard. A voice that could not be let out in my everyday life. A score that I needed to write, for my voice, and for the voices of people who have lived through similar experiences and don’t have the privilege (and curse) of knowing how to write about it. I am inspired every day, by the things I feel, and the things I see that make me feel. If an experience is strong enough to make me cry, or laugh, or be angry I know that it is worth writing about. I am inspired by the words of poets like Li-Young Lee whose craft and mastery of words seems otherworldly to me, being able to string together the perfect line that makes even the people who don’t want to read poetry stop and think for even just a moment. Poetry is an elusive animal, one that I don’t think even the most skilled poets have learned to tame. It is an animal that resides inside every one, a voice that is waiting to be unlocked, a voice spoken through the inspiration of every humans common experiences and connections. -Zac Carter, Co-Art Editor

Growing up, I wasn’t a big fan of the outdoors. I was a brownie in a Girl Scout troop, but I always skipped out on the camping trips. The thought of sleeping outside of a house where bugs were most definitely present and there was the prospect of wild animals never seemed alluring to me. I sometimes walked around parks with my friends, but if a bug even buzzed around her heads at a pitch too high for our liking we’d make our way back inside. I found air conditioning and glass sliding doors more comforting than any ducks’ pond or shady tree. Since I have started writing, I have learned to pay attention to the smaller details. I’ve been in line to buy an item of clothing and heard a single sentence from my fellow customers behind me that spark an idea in my head. I’ve watched my mom fiddle with her bracelets and watch the sound they make tumbling down her wrist, and knew that I needed to write that moment down. The neon color of a hat will give me a story idea. The way a stranger glances back at her car while walking into a store will give me a poem idea. This attention to smaller details of human nature made me feel as if my lack of appreciation of actual nature could be holding me back in my writing life. How could I pay attention to the smaller details in life when I wasn’t paying attention to the smaller details that made up the physical realm of everyone’s lives? It’s the squirrel that seemed to run into the road as soon as it saw me coming at 45 mph. It’s the Japanese plum trees that grow bulbs of yellow and tilt slightly to the right. The smallest of details are the ones I pass everyday without even thinking about them, the ones that were here before I was born, before my mother was born, and beyond. I now try to incorporate the physical beauty of nature into my writing, but not in just the description of setting or comparing someone’s eyes to a blossoming rose. I try to compare physical nature to human nature, two very present aspects of our lives that are both predictable and unpredictable. I think that is why both natures are so interesting to write about. For example, the ocean is vast and what lives underneath is surface is both a mystery and perpetual fear to humans. However, what we know for sure is that the white bubble waves of the ocean will always come back and meet the shore. I think humans are like that as well. You can think someone is the most complex person in the world, but everyone has habits and flaws. Everyone has basic instincts that kick in when in a situation. It is human nature. I still don’t find myself in nature, but it’s not because I’m avoiding it. Somehow as I’ve written about the beauty of nature and what it can represent in humans, I’ve found myself wanting to be surrounded by sunlight, whistling birds, and crouching trees with swinging moss. When I’m able to write outdoors, I breathe in crisp, spring air and breathe out whatever I’m writing, all while swatting at a mosquito the process. -Chelsea Ashley, Digital Media Editor