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Oral tradition is defined as “a community’s cultural and historical traditions passed down by word of mouth or example from one generation to another without written instruction.” In other words, everything we know about our parents (and their parents, and their parents, etc.) we learned from stories told through what they wore, what they drew, and what they made. My mother tells me stories about the crazy 80s fashion she went to high school with, but my father tells me about growing up in east Eritrea with dirt walls and no roof. Writing these stories down lends privilege to the lives we’d otherwise forget. Textbooks take down facts, writers take down the heart. As we close in on Élan’s 30th consecutive year in publication, it’s important to remind ourselves why we have made it this far and why we will continue to publish in the future. Through writing, we get to see what others left behind, and through our own writings we do the same for the readers who come after us. No one was there when the world began. I will never see my mother’s crazy 80s fashion and my father’s dirt walls. We have unanswered questions about how the world began and why we’re here. We’re all born into our own reality (our own truth) that’s continuously shaped by our experiences. With each story told, we chip away at that Truth. Élan does so much more than share the works of young writers. It keeps tradition from slipping through the cracks. It shares the stories we love hearing and forces us to listen to ones we don’t. Storytelling helps us cope with the unknown. It finds joy in those questions. Sharing our stories makes us a part of a larger one, and while we may never put our Truth into words (perhaps we were never meant to), storytelling makes that Truth accessible. In the last three decades, Élan has held onto those values. We have been a consistent, reliable, and important source of stories for the last thirty years and will continue to be so in the future -Tatiana Saleh, Senior Layout & Design Editor

If I had a nickel for the number of times I’ve heard the phrase “write what you know,” I’d probably have fifty nickels. While that is only a whopping $2.50, the point is, fifty times is a lot, considering I’ve only considered myself a writer for the past two years. This phrase used to grate on my nerves, making me want to scream, because I didn’t really know anything. Or at least, I didn’t think I did. I knew that Romeo loved Juliet and that anything that wasn’t poetry was prose. But how do you write about that? The answer is: you can’t. After many moons of biting my nails and unsuccessful third, fourth, and sometimes fifth, drafts, I realized the key is much more than writing what you know. A brilliant poetry teacher once told me poetry was like an onion, and with every read you pull of layers of emotion, meaning, truth. The core of it is writing what you know, but all the layers around this core rely on–get ready for it—lies. Tim O’ Brien said it best,  “A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth. And that’s why poetry gets written.” (Alright, he said fiction, but I think poetry still applies here.) After this brilliant discovery my poetry seemed to blossom. I took the core of it, what I knew, and all of these lies blossomed. Lies like beautiful images I’d pay to see, people I’d kill to meet, love I’d die to have, and loss I’d barely live through. I’d found that the images, or the lies, I created were indeed truer than anything I’d ever written, because once they were complete and on the page, I realized they were simply truths I’d never acknowledged. And so I’ve realized that lies are the key to all brilliant poetry, or maybe even all brilliant writing. Because the lies bound to page by an author’s hand really aren’t lies at all, but layers of an onion that were otherwise unacknowledged. –Darcy Graham, Fiction Editor

Sometimes I am not a writer. Despite the common misconception that many have that a writer is someone who “writes”, this is quite untrue. There is more that constitutes a writer than just the act of putting paper to pen. For some people writing is a spiritual expedition, one in which the worlds they create are more than just a figment of imagination but friends, cohorts, the voices in side their heads if I may. Borrowing Sidney Sheldon’s words: “A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it is to be God.” Writing is becoming God and creating matter out of thin air. I learned in Physics (and it might be the only thing I learned) that matter cannot be created or destroyed and yet writers defy that rule. I am a writer when I am creating more than ink on paper, more than black pixels on a computer screen. I am a creator of people, feelings, and moments that are more real to some people than their own lives. And as a writer, I break down barriers and flout social rules and shed light on the shadows of humanity. But sometimes I fall short. Sometimes my first draft is something that I use to mop up the spilled coffee on my table, something that I’d have to beg a dog to eat. But I get back up. I pick up my pen, and I become a little bit closer to God. The following a three poems that I feel come unreasonably close to describing the unique experience of writers everywhere: “Teaching Apes to Write Poems” by James Tate “Beware: Do Not Read This poem” by Ishmael Reed “Oatmeal” by Galway Kinnell --Stephanie Thompson, Public Relations & Marketing

Welcome back! With the smells of sharpened pencils and fresh paper comes classes, homework and peers. I’m so honored to take the lead this year and carry the torch hand in hand with my fellow co-editor, Sarah Buckman. The Élan staff as a whole is eager to take the brand new foundation we constructed last year and keep progressing. With the new building and construction occurring on campus, it comes natural. It’s almost unreal to try to image we could implement anymore change than we previously did. But I’ve already been proven wrong. This year’s homecoming is held in an entirely new location. And no one’s complaining about having to move the event out of the muggy gym. The new venue will hopefully attract a larger crowd. More people showing up means more people learning Élan’s name. Last year was strictly all about branding and defining our identity. I see this year’s focus being directed towards projecting that fortified identity to the public. We want people to know who and what we are. A large portion of gaining followers is making sure we’re directing our attention to the people who actually want it. The Élan will be striving to reach out the writers’ of this community and securing their presence with us. It’s so exciting to know that new art and writing will be in our hands in a matter of only thirty days. The submission period can be intensely chaotic with the hundreds of pieces to be read, but I’ve missed it. It’s so rewarding to be a part of a staff that has a shared, overarching goal: the dispersal of art. The process to achieve that distribution, no matter how hectic, is always worth it. Here’s to a new year, new land to trek and a new Élan to discover. -Mariah Abshire, Editor-in-Chief

We chose Moose in Traffic because it is broad enough for interpretation. This piece is unique and tells a story. We also thought that the color schemes, distinctive lighting, and shadow-play was interesting, and allowed the message to pop from the flat surface. Also, the piece displays a balance of abstract and realistic concepts which we felt made it extremely unique. We chose the art for our Winter 2013 Edition and it will be available to you online November 15, so save the date! –Sarah Buckman, Junior Art Editor

http://kandkadventures.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Eiffel-Tower-Paris-France.jpg I’m drawn to a certain style of writing that only specific genres can bring. Of course I love to curl up next to a fire scented candle in the winter and read a good fiction story. But fiction doesn’t have the honesty that I strive for when I read poetry. And Poetry, loaded with ambiguous language, can send my mind into another galaxy. So I look for one of my favorite genres, creative nonfiction. It is probably one of the most over looked and underrepresented genres in writing but it is a mix of truth, honest, imagery, and figurative language that connects like no other genre. People neglect that Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood is actually a creative nonfiction story. Under the lingering coarse details of a family murdered in Kansas, there is a pile of truth that no other fiction story or poem could reach, though creative nonfiction doesn’t have to be that dark. David Sedaris has written many essays and even published a book titled Me Talk Pretty One Day exploring his move from New York to Paris with a satirical witty approach. These writers both take either their own or other’s trials and tribulations in life load it with thought provoking and striking scenes before feeding it to readers. -Chrissy Thelemann, Submissions Editor

National Poetry Month is quickly drawing to a close, so as a bittersweet farewell we asked the Élan staff for their favorite lines of poetry. “For whatever we lose (like a you or a me) it’s always ourselves we find in the sea” –e.e. cummings. “maggie and milly and molly and may”. (Emily Cramer. Editor-in-Chief.) “Well what’s in the piñata they asked. I told them God was and they ran into the desert, barefoot.” –Natalie Diaz. “No More Cake Here”. (Sarah Buckman. Editor-in-Chief.) “You have my permission not to love me; I am a cathedral of deadbolts and I’d rather burn myself down than change the locks.” –Rachel McKibbens. “Letter from My Brain to My Heart”. (Emily Leitch. Layout Editor.) “Suddenly I realize that if I step out of my body I would break into blossom.” –James Wright. “A Blessing”. (Taylor Austell. Layout Editor.) “Now you say this is home so go ahead, worship the mountains as they dissolve in dust, wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life.” –Philip Levine. “Our Valley”. (Raegen Carpenter. Poetry Editor.) “then I awoke and dug that if I dreamed natural dreams of being a natural woman doing what a woman does when she’s natural I would have a revolution.” –Nikki Giovanni. “Revolutionary Dreams”. (Brittanie Demps. Poetry Editor.) “we are for each: then laugh, leaning back in my arms for life’s not a paragraph And death i think is no parenthesis” –e.e. cummings. “since feeling is first” (Mariah Abshire. Poetry Editor.) “I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.” –Maya Angelou. “Still I Rise”. (Kiera Nelson. Fiction Editor.) “I had the new books—words, numbers and operations with numbers I did not comprehend—and crayons, unspoiled by use, in a blue canvas satchel with red leather straps. Spruce, inadequate, and alien I stood at the side of the road. It was the only life I had.” –Jane Kenyon. “Three Songs at the End of Summer”. (Emily Jackson. Non-Fiction Editor.) “I’m carrying my box of faces. If I want to change faces, I will.” –Naomi Shihab Nye. “One Boy Told Me”. (Shamiya Anderson. Non-Fiction Editor.) “The names of women melt in their mouths like hot mints.” –Yusef Komunyakaa. “Moonshine”. (Haley Hitzing. Social Media Editor.) “And I’d like to be a bad woman, too, and wear the brave stockings of night-black lace and strut down the streets with paint on my face. –Gwendolyn Brooks. “a song in the front year.” (Madison George. Social Media Editor.) “So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish.” –Charles Baudelaire. “Be Drunk.” (Makenzie Fields. Submissions Editor.) “God comes to your window all bright and black wings, and you’re just too tired to open it.” –Dorianne Laux. “Dust”. (Stephanie Thompson. P.R. & Marketing Editor.) “come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed.” –Lucille Clifton. “Eve Thinking”. (Mrs. Melanson. Teacher Sponsor.)

This year is my first year on the Élan staff and I’m so excited to be a part of something so huge. I wanted to be put on Élan for many reasons but the biggest would be that I wanted to be deeply involved with the Creative Writing department. I had never really felt like I was apart of the department in the ways I wanted to be. I never helped with candy sells or anything that benefitted the department as a whole but the past year showed me that I really did want to be a part of this in any way I could. Seeing everything the Creative Writing department does for us, such as Writer’s Festival, I was able to realize that I wanted to give back in a sense. I’m willing to put my all into the department and see what comes of it. Last year I didn’t think there would be any way I would be put on the Élan staff because I had never really shown an interest in the department, let alone Élan but somehow I was lucky enough to be picked. I take great pride in knowing that I was one of the few lucky enough to be given this opportunity. I want to do anything possible this year to make my role matter. I want to learn and take in as much as possible because this is such a great opportunity and experience. I was positioned as junior poetry editor this year in Élan and I’m excited to see what I can add to that role to make the poetry section even better. Not only does this give me the chance to make it better but I’m also getting to surround myself with work from other writers. I have a deep passion for poetry and being given this opportunity allows me to grow as a writer as well as an individual. This is giving me the sense of responsibility that I have always craved and I’m excited to see how far that can take me this year. -Anna Dominguez, Junior Poetry Editor

All people do their entire life is try to figure out who they are as a person.  Many people die trying. As for myself, I can’t say I know the essence of my entirety. My mind and soul and body are on wheels spinning in different directions, sometimes on different continents, it seems… But what I do know is that I understood myself less before I poured into the pages of the Harry Potter series. I’ve found my fingers flipping J.K. Rowling’s pages, becoming lost in the labyrinths of her plots, carried away in the compassion flowing from her characters. As I’m reading this series, all these people see the body of the book, its spine, or the cover between my hands wherever I am. I heard things like: “I read that series in elementary school…” I couldn’t help but feel a flush of red overpower my cheeks and almost feel ashamed for being a seventeen year old reading this series. I kept reading and it was soon that I decided reading this series was the best thing that ever happened to me.  Anyone I’ve met that shares an interest and love for this series has felt instantly like family to me. These books hold so much invention and creativity, from creatures such a as hippogriphs and phoenixes, to things like death eaters and giant serpents, to settings of moving staircases and talking portraits…The plethora of uniqueness drips from page to page. Perhaps the love I feel for the Harry Potter books is mostly due to its characters. Like Ginny, I am often shy and quiet around crushes. Every now and then I am the clumsy and unlucky Neville. Sometimes I am the ambitious and overachiever Hermione. I am the animal enthusiast, Hagrid. I am the embarrassed, red cheeked Ron as my parents discuss bills, or my sibling’s triumphs surpass my own. I am the average person who found out they are indeed brave and special and worth something. Someone smart once said “you must love yourself before you can love others”. In a way, finding who I am is a step closer to being able to accept and love myself. I may not live in the world beyond the bricks of 9 and ¾. I may not fly Firebolts and speak to elves like Dobby, but that’s the magic of fiction. I can coexist as myself, in this world, or I can apparate into another world. And to J.K. Rowling, you’ve made a world in which I love the characters, and in return, have found ways to appreciate myself. And so for all the days and nights flipping pages, I give my most real and honest thank you. -Kathleen Roland, Art Editor

Do you ever get the feeling that you just can’t write? You wake up, brush your teeth, comb your hair and go off to school. You don’t think about writing at all, or feel that you don’t have the time to. Trust me, all writers have been there. Recently, I realized that I have not been writing for myself. Focused on school work and life in general, I haven’t taken the time to sit down and write every day, just because I should. Writing is a living, breathing thing. If you don’t practice it, it dies. A harsh image, I know, but when you think about it, if you don’t write just for the pure enjoyment of being able to, you get rusty. It bores you after a while, and that to a creative writing student is very frightening. We all have that “aha” moment, where we realize that we have just been doing what were told, and have not done anything for ourselves in a while. On the other hand, sometimes we do take that time out of our day to sit and write, but nothing comes. Whether it be journal entries, daily haikus etc. All you need is about twenty minutes every day, a pen and paper, and the drive to create something that is unique and all your own! Here are some websites with great and easy prompts or daily challenges to get your creative juices flowing. http://inkygirl.com/1000-words-a-day-project/ http://institutechildrenslit.net/Writers-First-Aid-blog/2013/01/22/putting-first-things-first-by-using-accountability/ http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/01/07/writing-challenge-map-it-out/ http://institutechildrenslit.net/Writers-First-Aid-blog/2013/01/22/putting-first-things-first-by-using-accountability/ –Sarah Buckman

The fourth month of the year is a time for poets around the world to rejoice. An entire thirty days strictly dedicated to the craft of poetry. I’m eager to broadcast my passion for this art form beyond just my responsibilities as one of Élan’s poetry editors, even beyond the creative writing department as a whole. Poetry is a universal vehicle of emotion and connection. And so, the craft should be readily available to the universe. It would be unrealistic wishing for the entire Douglas Anderson student body to be as enthusiastic about National Poetry Month as I am, the tallest of any order. (But if they were, my existence on this planet would be fulfilled.) Instead, I’ll narrow my scope. This April, I hope to reach out and enlighten one non-poet and reveal poetry’s often overlooked allure. I want to shatter the dissecting lens English classes bound to poetry. I need to prove how poetry can flip a person’s entire world—just as it did to mine. --Mariah Abshire, Poetry Editor

Writers have a reputation for being cold. The writer spends his days at a desk working the same words into different orders, avoiding other people so he can concentrate, obsessing over titles, obsessing over the few experiences he has with the outside world, obsessing obsessing obsessing. The nights are the same, but darker, mixed with images of the tortured soul. Addiction, insomnia, and night terrors are common. The writer is alone, is misanthropic, is sarcastic and mean, is cold. The stereotype is half the story; the warmer side of the literary life is rarely thought of. The misconceptions of writing are clear to anyone who lives a creative life. No writer gets by spending all his time alone with words. The world itself is necessary for details in poems, characters in stories, and the plot itself in creative nonfiction. Not every writer is tortured. Conflicted over his emotions? Of course. Obsessive? At times. Insomniac? Well, if you’re working on a piece and sleep gets in the way…. But, overall, the writer must not be an emotional/psychological wreck. Not every decision needs obsession, not every poem means sleepless nights, and not every writer is an alcoholic. Even those who were made it a rule not to write while drunk—the process itself was plain and untortured. Which leaves the warmth of writing. The moments when the writer realizes the music of a phrase or sentence, the times when characters come alive, the times when a plot twist seems to suggest itself. And the warmth isn’t just related to craft—it comes from those moments when he reads another writer that confirms a belief he’s always had but never known how to express, when he rereads a book from his childhood, when he sits down after a long day to do something he loves—to follow a passion as fully as possible. The relationships formed from thinking so carefully about emotions, the dedication to work gained from reading and passion, the optimism from affirming that life is worth living, is complete, can be beautiful—these are some of the warmest experiences a person can have, and they all stem from writing. Let the stereotype of the tortured writer rest. Focus instead on those comfortable images—that warmth hiding behind the emotional façade. Affirm that life is good and happy. And write about it. -Jacob Dvorak, Senior Fiction Editor