This piece in the 2020 spring edition caught my eye as one of the more intriguing pieces in the edition's contents. Being a long time proponent and voracious consumer of information on space programs around the world, the challenger disaster has always been resounding in abysmal horror and a deep sadness inherent in what the community holds as one of the most revered crews in space history. This poem, told from the perspectives of those who were watching that day beautifully, moved me in a way mere information and research could provide. The poem, separated into vignettes of poetic narrative surrounding the ’86 Challenger Disaster offers a telling and renowned timely narrative on one of the most impactful events of a generation lost to the younger readers of today. This iteration of our publication has received so many excellent submissions, particularly in the collection of poetry that we have fielded across the world, primarily from younger writers. It is by this demographic of source that this piece aroused our interests for our publication. What makes me so infatuated by its captive narrative is the way the narrative dynamically wove together all of these perspectives from across America to characterize a national tragedy. It is by evident extensive research and investment that Carmichael was able to eloquently capture the national psyche during the horror of the cataclysmic failures that day. Very rarely am I able to live vicariously through the written word, particularly to the extent of emotional totality that this piece offers. Regardless of my absence in 1986, I am able to capture an inkling of the shock and horror that the families, countrymen and constituents of those astronauts experienced. It is by this aspect of the piece’s nature, that I was so drawn to its content. The piece serves as a necessary memoriam to the sacrifice and honor of the mission’s crew, particularly centering on astronaut-teacher Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher to be flow into space, with the intention of broadcasting lessons from within the space shuttle. She is regarded as being a pioneer in both teaching and aeronautics. The piece’s value lies not just in its value as a reverent piece of literature covering the collective trauma of a nation, but also a journey into the emotional landscape of the millions of Americans looking onward as the shuttle erupted into a ball of flame. When our editors are looking through pieces, rarely do we come across pieces that can doubly accomplish these goals like this. There are very few poetic pieces on events like these, so it is important that we pay reverence to and patronize those that conform to our editorial standard and fulfill our hunger for good and satisfying literature. Our spring edition is filled with pieces that for me allow for the transcendental vicarious experience mentioned prior. This batch of particularly potent poetry was by far the most fascinating conglomeration of talent I’ve seen in my interactions with our publication. It is for these reasons that I recommend you look into our Spring Edition and read the piece for yourself. - Sheldon White, Junior Fiction/CNF Editor

Poems are powerful tools. They're also very versatile. Raleigh Walter, a poet published in our upcoming spring issue, understands this. "Flamenco Shoe" is a poem that we're very proud to be displaying as it offers so much insight about family, the emotional inheritance that we are forced to bear, and what it means to eulogize someone with a dedication to the truth. "Flamenco Shoe" begins with an image enshrined in tenderness and articulated with great care. The objects around a person--their modes of circumstance--can come to define them and are often the things we hold onto the strongest, and whether they are "bleached white tube socks" or the "morning newspapers" that punctuate our days, it is important to recall them with precision. And that is perhaps the best description of this poem's feats: the images, the feelings that constitute our families can often surface nebulously, but here they bubble up with muscular exactness. From the tenderness, we move to a place of confusion. The speaker's mother is recalled, and the three generations are linked in a delicately ambiguous braid. In a balancing act, we operate with ambiguity for the rest of the poem and end there with plenty to think about. I think I love this poem because of its verism. When we write an ode, a eulogy, or remember in any other way, we are so frequently prone to the throes of nostalgia and remain trapped in the constraints of a false positive. Poetry can be used to remember, but that is often a different thing from remembering correctly. The expressions, the linguistic gestures, the intimacy of the images here are astonishingly unforgiving. They evoke feeling with no room for misunderstanding and do not yield to pure adoration or pure disdain. I have been thinking a lot lately about what it means to revisit the events, the people, the monolithic moments that so profoundly shape us in ways we don't even recognize. We owe it to ourselves and to them to apply in our looking back the clarity that we have been granted since then. Processing, understanding, intake can be delayed significantly from occurrence. I am reminded of Toni Morrison's expression of "rememory" in Beloved. Sometimes, memories live on in us--or with us, as sentient beings--and take their own shapes, rear their own heads. "Flamenco Shoe" processes with sage, mature clarity. It eulogizes with careful mastery. It engages carefully with the rememory. It reminds us all that meditation with respect to the truth is better for us all than blind worship. I am proud to have such a wise contemplation in a magazine designed to uplift youth voices. Sometimes, wisdom can be found in the places we look for it last. - Conor Naccarato, Senior Poetry Editor

One of my favorite pieces in our Spring Book is a story titled, “By the Cornfields.” And while I typically prefer reading poetry over fiction, there is no denying the masterful craft involved in creating a full narrative in 310 words. There is an eeriness to the piece’s voice that is unlike any Élan submission I’ve ever seen. The speaker is so well characterized through their sparse dialogue, and looming environmental details, that such a mall word count seems impossible. I especially like the bluntness taken on at certain times in the piece. At one point the speaker says, almost directly to the reader, “She was too old to be worrying about me. I was too old; men my age wake and can’t find comfort in their beds again. And that’s that.” The voice relays such certainty despite their seemingly constant paranoia. It is extremely satisfying to observe a character with so many layers in a microfiction piece. Length aside, I truly admire Reece’s piece for its uniqueness. We get a pretty large array of Southern Gothic submissions tackling tropes and archetypes we are all too familiar with. We also get a lot of submissions displaying the dynamics within a marriage—the certain unavoidable conflicts, or a struggle for power. Reece manages to display elements from both of these things in a way I’ve never seen before. She creates a hellscape of sorts: in the country— out in the middle of nowhere—where a man favors his delusions over his wife, and the farm around him symbolizes the insanity (or evil) taking over him. I can’t put into words how much I enjoy this piece, and how proud I am to include it in our Spring Edition. The uniqueness I mentioned in regard to Reece’s fiction can be said about a lot of our submissions this issue. As far as art goes, we got a fair number of abstract pieces that are typically hard to come by. Beautiful works such as Maverick Johnson’s Earth’s Sensations and Tamia Brinkley’s Composition 9721 helped evolve Élan’s voice from Fall to Spring; and even the pieces themselves display a kind of movement that perfectly matches the symbolism behind spring: renewal, rebirth. That being said, our book also does a great amount of work to contradict the typical messages of Spring. Some of my favorite pieces delve into hauntings of the past—such as Breana Kinchen’s “Oranges” or Jasper Darnell’s “How You Learned to Sleepwalk.” I think we cover almost every possible human emotion from cover to cover. This Spring Issue will be my second-to-last book as Editor-in-Chief. Looking through the rough draft of the book, I couldn’t be more happy with what we managed to accomplish during this hectic time. I’m also extremely proud of my Junior Editor-in-Chief, Zoe, who took the Spring Issue on with great leadership and control. Everyone single person on this staff has grown above and beyond their role—and for that I am also proud. I’m immensely grateful for the wonderful teen artists who make this book possible. I’ve never wanted Élan to have a “voice,” but rather, an ever-changing collection of voices. As an editor on the Élan staff, we don’t have the power to control what pieces get submitted: only which ones we choose to publish. It is important to us that all genres, all backgrounds, all topics, get their fair share of space in our publication. This issue ranges from helping a loved one with dementia, to visiting a father in jail, to an American Heritage Girls camping trip. The options are truly endless. And seeing this end result, I truly think the founding Élan staff from 35 years ago would be proud of their legacy. - Olivia Meiller, Senior Editor-in-Chief

This year's D.A. Writers’ Fest will be my first-- a mistake I can blame only on myself. I was a 14-year-old freshman the first time I heard of Writers’ Fest, and decidedly didn’t have enough foresight to attend. I said I’d go the next year, but by the time the next year had come around and my excitement had grown, I learned that Writers’ Fest was an every-other-year event which I’d only get two opportunities to attend as a high school student, one of which I’d just missed. So now, after a long wait, I’m prepared and beyond excited to attend my very first (but not last) Writers’ Fest this coming March. I’m especially excited about this year’s line-up of writers, which boasts a variety of writers from poets to playwrights with diverse and unique styles and experiences. Among the ranks of this lineup of acclaimed writers are two in particular that I’m thrilled and eager to learn from: poets Terrance Hayes and Franny Choi. I was introduced to Terrance Hayes earlier this year during an author study project focused on identifying craft choices that make up an author’s unique style. Two of these craft choices that had an impact on me were his innovation of poetic structure, and his focus on the emotional impact of the language itself. In a reigning age of free verse, Hayes makes a mark in his use of poetic format. For example, in his most recent collection, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, Hayes explores historical, current, and future violence against black men through fresh takes on the sonnet form. Hayes’ use and innovation of structure is an inspiration to both the seasoned and aspiring poet, a reminder of why we grew to love poetic form in the first place, as well as the place it has in contemporary poetry. And his “language first, meaning second” approach to poetry– a pursuit of using language to replicate feeling as purely as possible, creating poems where the language affects you before you try to rationalize. The results of this endeavor are poems like “Hip Logic,” evocative beyond measure, cinematic and visual in nature. It comes as no surprise that Hayes was a painter before he was a poet. Like Hayes, I first encountered Franny Choi in the classroom, but under very different circumstances. It was my sophomore year, my first year in the D.A. Creative Writing program, and my first real brush with poetry. I’d written poetry in the past, but always under a deadline, always for a grade. I never considered myself a poet, and harbored a harsh and unfounded disdain for contemporary poetry. But here my teacher was, with a stack of poetry books, anthologies, and magazines, asking that I read and try to connect. This is the process that led me to an armchair in the back of the classroom, holding a back issue of Poetry Magazine, searching for a poem to read. The poem I found was Choi’s “Perihelion: A History of Touch.” It wasn’t the poem I was looking for, a poem that was short and easy to understand, but instead one that was winding and took some patience– and yet it was the poem that moved me forward in my poetry. It was an inviting mix of the familiar and unfamiliar; reminiscent of the magical realism I loved, but still something I hadn’t been so sure about until that point: a poem. Given that Choi has had such an impact on my story as a writer and as a poet, I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to learn from her and her writing this Writers’ Fest, and likewise, to learn from Hayes and his craft, as well as the other writers in the lineup. The existence of Writers’ Fest really is a feat– for a public school to pull off a festival of this magnitude and prestige is a testament to the strength of the ever-growing arts community in Jacksonville. I can’t wait to see what these amazing writers and this amazing community has to offer, and I’m hoping my attendance at this year’s Writers’ Fest and all of the Writers’ Fests of the future will make up for the ones that I’ve missed. – Blake Molenaar, Junior Art Editor

When I went to Writers' Fest in 2018, I had the pleasure of meeting and being taught by George Saunders. When we had this last Writers' Fest, Saunders was getting ready to circulate his new book, Lincoln in the Bardo. After being taught with examples from his short stories which were nothing short of excellent, I was very keen to hear him speak on craft, and to share with us his insight into the cognition and execution of the creative impulses surrounding the short story. His seminar was indicative of what his students must experience at Syracuse. To have that intimacy and opportunity for interaction with the learning process was something that would be inaccessible from a traditional, large scale seminar, or a auditorium experience. Saunders spoke in depth about his creations and the process of developing meaningful components like characters and action within short fiction and how they can move the story forward through immediacy. Through this immediacy, he and my teachers claimed, was the key to authenticity and how readers could be brought into the space we as writers need them to be in. Following his presentation and lesson, which was the most advertised and awaited, we were brought into a rotation of smaller seminars and lessons by other writers with an even smaller class, or group to create with. Each writer brought their specialty, or technique to be brought into a classroom setting for distribution, possibly for the first time. We were being given access to what so many people needed to hear, and what was so inaccessible otherwise. Another one of my favorite lessons was from Yvette Angelique Hyater-Adams. She brought with her a “braided story technique,” something that was entirely foreign to me at the time. Through her workshop, which focused on bringing two stories together and intertwining them to create a central narrative, I created my next portfolio story using the technique. This concept of using two influences was echoed in a later workshop where I learned “the jazz method” of writing poetry. This was by far my favorite workshop, and I still use the technique today when writing poetry. The process calls for the integration of a concrete narrative, or predetermined sequence of words or phrases that could be written together to create narrative. This concept of adding arbitrary constriction on the creative process to ignite and instigate new ways of creating is something that I have since praised as the greatest way to access creativity. My mother’s company is built upon the ideas of treating those with brain injury with creative instances similar to those with restrictions similar to that from the workshops. I wrote most of my poems from that year using some degree of predetermined sequencing in order to “write around” the problem, thus creating something entirely new. I will take with me forever into my writing processes the lessons learned form the elite writers procured by the Writers' Fest administration. Their insight into craft, and suggestions regarding creative approaches to the issues of the common writer were something that is simply not available outside of that setting and opportunity. For that reason, I am incredibly excited about seeing such talented writers return to our space again and impart more wisdom for the class to execute on. - Sheldon White, Junior Fiction/CNF Editor

I am two years past my first Writers' Festival and the experience still heavily influences how I write as well as how I view myself in the scheme of the literary community. I went into the day worried that I would be distant from the writers. I’d have to elbow through adult strangers just for the chance to brush Tracy K. Smith’s garment... then maybe, just maybe, I would absorb some of her holy knowledge. This was not an accurate prediction. Every writer, from alumni to local favorite to headliner was dedicated to making connections with the attendees of the festival. This along with the festival's intentional design made for an incredibly intimate experience. The writers took us in as their own students and brought us powerful lessons that not only shook my approach to writing, but had me leaving each workshop with a new piece of writing. The writer I was anticipating the most in the months leading up to Writers' Fest was Jessica Hendry Nelson. Like all of the featured writers, she is wholly unique. In my freshman year our class read "Rapture of the Deep" for a lesson in creative non-fiction. From there I began reading her book and just fell in love. She wields language in a way that does not wring meaning from tired syntax. In creative nonfiction I found myself constantly trapped in the cycle of retelling mystery then adorning it with sparkling language and colorful images. This method is like beautifying a corpse before burial. Jessica does not just clip pretty pieces to a dead thing. In her workshop she taught us how to extract vivid details from our experiences. We received practical instruction on how to use specificity to reveal a deep, meaningful reflection of each moment. She taught us how to avoid vaguely reflective narration and instead allow carefully selected details to advance the physical and emotional narrative. Jessica Hendry Nelson moves memoir through brilliant bursts of syntax like a flash of light. Striking the eye unexpectedly and leaving you momentarily blind. Forcing you to blink your way to insight. After her workshop I feel I am a step closer to doing the same. At the end of the day I was able to personally express my gratitude to her and she responded with a hug. I very poorly concealed how overwhelmingly ecstatic I was. One can not overstate how impactful Writers' Festival is to the young writer. It is an opportunity to (in many cases literally) brush shoulders with what could be their future. The organizers of Writers' Festival do such a masterful job of showing writers with incredibly diverse styles at different points in their careers creating in very different ways. For me it was a powerful push of encouragement confirming that at heart I am a writer and no matter how that manifests itself for me there is a place for everyone in the literary community. - Ashley Chatmon, Senior Marketing Editor

I had my first Writers' Fest sophomore year. Admittedly, I didn’t know what to expect. I was still developing my craft during that time and hadn’t broke through that creative surface. I struggled with accepting my writing as my own, creating stories and stories that didn’t entirely tell my truth. When I arrived on that early morning, I was cold and tired. It hadn’t dawned on me that I was about to be in the presence of amazing writers who wanted to share their expertise with my classmates and me. I hadn’t accepted that this event was for me; I really hadn’t accepted that I was a writer. I had made notes about workshops that I was interested in and took notes while I was in those master classes, but the experience didn’t really hit me until I attended a workshop with Ira Sukrungruang. I went to his workshop, originally, because I enjoyed his personality on stage when all of us creative writers were introduced to the authors. He was bright, funny, and incredibly genuine. I wanted to see how he was able to be himself since I struggled with doing that – in other words, I was seeking out personal truth. I didn’t know this was what my creative brain was reaching for, but looking back, that is exactly what it craved, subconsciously. In that master class, I learned about the depth of creative nonfiction – a genre that boggled my mind because I hated writing anything about myself. I was exposed to a bigger issue within myself. I was closed off and felt unworthy of expressing what pained me and what made me happy. I wanted my stories (both fictional and not) to have nothing to do with me; many of my stories told of the fantasies I wanted my life to be filled with. Writing, for me, was always a very solitary and self-fulfilling practice in those years. I never thought about the reader; I was my only reader. I never wanted to express the journey of my characters because I knew, somehow, it would get too personal. As I have gotten older, I have realized how damaging this can be to one’s craft and one’s own journey of healing. In that master class, Ira told us to write something true. Something that affected us deeply. He said no one had to read it but you. That was the first time I ever wrote something honest about my insecurities. After we all took that time to write, he allowed some people to share what they put down. That space became incredibly vulnerable. He even asked if anyone of us had nervous habits; I opened up about how I picked my nails or cuticles when I was sad, angry, or nervous. Overall, that entire experience was shocking; the things I shared surprised me. I had always been uncomfortable with vulnerability because I had been so used to bottling my problems, but that experience taught me to let yourself live; to allow truth a voice. By allowing your writing to capture a personal lens, the reader can relate to it. If not for the story or nonfiction piece, in the very least, do it for yourself. That Writers' Fest, yes, taught me about writing, but it mostly taught me about humanity. I lacked so much humanity and understanding in my life because I was taught it didn’t matter. I was used to keeping it to myself because my pain didn’t matter; what made me live and hurt didn’t matter. I am happy to say I consider myself more of a writer than I did, then. I am a lot more mature, vulnerable, and I understand the importance of personal truth. I try to live by my truth every day; I am more myself because of it. By allowing myself access to my humanity, I have been able to connect to the humanity of others, even if it’s just for a laugh or moment of empathy. I strive to be as genuine as Ira and it has helped me grow tremendously. I am not as scared to be myself, anymore. Granted, I still struggle – there is always doubt when I decide to write something that puts my vulnerability out there. I know there is a reader, though, who may resonate with what I say; maybe through my words, they will find their own. - Reece Braswell, Senior Art Editor

I was able to go to Douglas Anderson’s Writers' Festival for the first time when I was in my sophomore year of high school. When I looked through all the authors and their workshops I had a hard time picking which ones I wanted to go to, as I found each one interesting. One that stood out to me immediately was Jim Peterson’s workshop called the Jazz Method of Poetry. The workshop was about connecting writing poetry to playing jazz, and I knew once I read the description that I wanted to go. Looking back at my memories of Writers' Fest, this workshop stands out the most to me. Peterson gave a bit of a lesson on how jazz is played and how that connects to writing poetry. Jazz musicians don’t know what they will be doing next when they are performing. This causes the music to become brand new, to become one of a kind. He connected this to writing and being able to go into your unconscious. To find something new within your ideas. I really connected with this idea and still find myself returning to it years later. We were then given an exercise where we were given a list of words, some of them being rifle, crouch, mockingbird, tin can, leash, and so on. We had to include each word in every other line. I remember being nervous about doing this exercise, like I was afraid of writing something bad with what I was given. Once I pushed myself to go for it I ended up finding it a really beneficial experience. What I thought would restrict me actually helped me go further in my writing and create something I didn’t expect at all. It was freeing to be able to do this and I'm so glad I attended this workshop. It wasn't like anything I had done before. Thinking about this one workshop makes me so excited for this upcoming Writers' Festival. It is such a special opportunity that us students get, as well as the Jacksonville community. Along with Jim Peterson's workshop, another special memory I have from the event was hearing every artist read some of their work at the morning sampler. It was the first thing we did and made me so inspired and excited for the rest of the day. That moment truly put into perspective how amazing it was to be there. Writers' Fest felt like a game changing moment for me. It was one of the first moments I felt like a true writer. At that point in my writing life, I had never felt more inspired by what I was surrounded with. Going into this year's Writers' Fest, I'm so excited to be a part of this again. Where I was as a writer in my sophomore year compared to my senior year is a big difference. I'm a different person than I was then, but I'm just as excited to attend this event. - Anna Howse, Senior Fiction/CNF Editor

As a freshman at Douglas Anderson, I experienced my first Writers’ Fest on a whim, oblivious to the work that goes into the event. Something that I did notice, despite my naive nature, is that the writers had a lot of interesting and thoughtful things to say. They spoke to me in few ways people do; they listened to my innermost questions when it came to writing, and provided answers I still use today in my work. One of those people, specifically, was George Saunders. George Saunders and Tracy K. Smith were the headliners that year, and I went to both of their lectures. Coming out of both, I gained valuable information that is universal to my work. George Saunders had a wonderful question and answer section, which let writers ask questions that matter to them, and lets them receive a response from a world-class, bestselling author. One of the questions that came up in the question and answer section was simple: what does writing mean to you? His answer, unlike many public figures in today’s world, did not try to avoid the subject matter. He took it head-on, thoughtfully, and left us with something deep to think about. Writing is not putting words on a page, it is communicating a message in a universal way, and benefits society in ways that few other methods do. It strengthens our bond with our own humanity, and creates new ones with other people. Not only does it do justice to the questions of our conscious, it implements a major rule in our lives: don’t hold anything back. Hearing this, the last few words reminded me of a poster that hung, and still hangs, in my creative writing classroom: “Go so deep into yourself, you speak for everyone.” – Galway Kinnell. Through this immaculate response, I now use this method and way of thinking about writing every time I pick up my pen. If it is going to be something more meaningful than a fun read or a stream of consciousness, it needs to hint at a deeper message. It needs to speak to people and let them leave with something meaningful. Good writing lets words jump off the page, and stick in the reader’s mind for a long time. Couple that with an important message, and suddenly we’ve made a monumental change in the world with only some words, some paragraphs, some pages. It fills in the holes we have as humans, and it lets us fumble without feeling we’ve failed. This is what writing now means to me, thanks to that simple question and a beautiful answer. George Saunders was not the only writer that made a meaningful change in the way I view writing, and, therefore, the way I view life. Other writers made meaningful comments and showed us techniques that I still use daily. It is through these conversations that I had with wonderful writers that made me the person I am today, and that is all thanks to the Douglas Anderson Writers’ Fest. Without it, I would never have gotten the opportunity to experience such wonder and skill. I am still thankful to this day, and with a new Writers’ Festival coming up, I’m looking forward to being there. - Jasper Darnell, Junior Layout & Design Editor

One of the most meaningful workshops I went to, was accidental. I had heard from one of my classmates that an essayist was going to be in a room upstairs and across campus, when I had gotten there, a small sign on the door told me she was moved downstairs and back across campus. With two minutes left to get in a class and me, being a small anxious 9th grader, didn’t want to walk into a workshop late, have everybody’s eyes on me and leave a bad first impression. So, I turned around to the next door, hoping that there was a workshop going on in there. It was Teri Grimm’s workshop, a local poet, who I hadn’t paid any attention to before that very moment. Much of the workshop consisted of us, me and the other people in the room, picking a small stone from a bag, with our eyes closed. And then, with our eyes still closed, we wrote how the stone felt; the stone I was holding was small, no bigger than the pit of a peach, but it was fairly heavy, like a few quarters in my hand, and it was smooth and very cold, I tried to warm it up between my palms. Then, she wanted us to open our eyes and write what it didn’t obviously look like, mine was grey in an obvious way, but if you were to look closely there were streaks of whites and somewhat purple colors, to me it looked like the rolling clouds of a thunderstorm, or a water cup murky from paint, less pretty but more accurate. The workshop could be described as ‘odd’, but it could also be described as ‘supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’; before going to the workshop I didn’t realize how important it was to focus your detail and attention on other sensory details, rather than what is obviously being seen, that a whole world isn’t really created without smell, taste, touch, and sound. If you give the reader, or even yourself as the writer, only what you see, you only paint a picture, something they can look at, they are never really there with you without being able to hear what you hear, and how you hear it. – Zoe Lathey, Junior Editor-in-Chief

The first time I engaged with the inspiriting vulnerability, the transient warmth of Yvette Angelique Hyater-Adams, I was wandering Douglas Anderson’s 2018 Writers' Festival. It was my sophomore year, and I, a naive and craft-study-suckling, self-proclaimed “poet” had willingly been at the mercy of an artistic puberty that most creatives know all too well— beginning to feel changes, such as my eyes sharpening to find real-world images, metaphors, poems, and noticing more and more often a prick in my heart that felt something like bee teeth: in those moments leaking the sticky, honey-esque sealant that bound me (hostage as a house guest!) to the unconditional love of Writerhood. Though I’m not particularly sure what inclined me (our shared name? my infatuation with essay writing and all its intrinsic intimacy?) to sit in on her workshop, “Plaits and Weaves: The Braided Personal, Place, and Social Justice Essay”, the experience would prove to be one of the most impactful moments of my creative life. With my pen and journal—an old diary with a small spiral notepad taped outward on the back cover— anchored in hand, some friends and I made our way into the theater where Mrs. Hyater-Adams (who would now likely roll her eyes at that formality!) was presenting her workshop. Beside her, the projector she used was not unlike a fireplace, the glow of front-and-center slides lighting the dim space with words that warmed and thawed us then to our most vulnerable roots. I most distinctly remember Mrs. Hyater-Adams showing us there an excerpt from Claudia Rankine’s essay, Citizen: An American Lyric— a piece about living as a marginalized racial identity that translated this experience through a second person, internal musing and the braided use of prose poetry, descriptive vignettes, lyrics and lyrical essay. Being the little biracial, lyric-obsessed writer that I was/am, the entire excerpt had me both hungry and fed. At the time too, my inner poet’s puberty had me lusting for the sweet push of my thoughts pressing against boundaries— for personal truth, and making paint from the velvet blood of my deeply cut vulnerability. Afterwards, Mrs. Hayter-Adams gave us a range of different sources to write from— one of which was an early 2000’s song that everybody knew (but I can’t really remember the name of…) that prompted me, for the first time ever, to write about my dad. After sprawling out the now vivid memory of my dad and I speeding late at night to the liquor store, windows down and the car’s music bass boosted, I slowly let myself crawl into using my words to explore our complex relationship: by my senior year, I’ve probably written eight or nine poems about him. I’ve definitely cried twice that in doing so. Out loud, I shared that image with the workshop group. A year later, Yvette Angelique and I would cross paths again during a therapeutic poetry workshop that I was monitoring and she was invited to teach at. At first, we laughed about our shared name— hers with a Y, mine with an E, but it got us to start talking on a more meaningful level. There, she invited me to her summer writing intensive for women, Narratives for Change, which I participated in over the summer with seven other women whom I developed an unbreakable bond with. In Yvette’s program, I wrote about my sexual assault for the first time in my life. My last day there, Yvette hugged me tight and safe in her arms while I cried… what I’m trying to get at, I think, is that I met Yvette Angelique Hyater-Adams at Writers' Festival and now I’ve adopted her as a mother. She was the person who sat down with me and helped me make a list of colleges with undergraduate writing programs that would be supportive of my mental health when I was in the midst of convincing myself that I’d never be able to get into, let alone handle college. She told me that I had an undeniable talent for writing, that I had passion, and that she wouldn’t let me let that go to waste. I would have likely never had the opportunity to develop such a meaningful relationship with her if not for Writers' Festival, and I am eternally grateful for that. Not only that, but the entire experience of the festival filled me with a general feeling of worthiness as writer: there, I got to choose my own destiny— I was in total control of what I got to engage with (the possibilities of which were many), and so I was able to tailor the experience into what would be most meaningful for me. In having that chance, my creative life was able to jump from that ledge and experience a breathtaking sort of butterfly effect: all of the pieces adding up to span outwards from me into a set of wings, a post-cocoon body grown with memories that would forever remind me that yes— from this high up, it is undeniable now. I am a valid writer, and I don’t ever want to let that go to waste. - Evette Davis, Senior Web Editor

I was really inspired by "Icarus Drowning" by Isabella Tolbert. I just love how she took the story of Icarus and expanded it. She took the story and ran with it and at the same time kept the natural authenticity. Everything explored in the poem went along with the story. Nothing felt out of the blue. It's very important when you’re completing a myth or writing an ekphrastic piece of work to put yourself into the story or the story's mindset. Tolbert clearly placed herself inside the myth of Icarus and Daedalus she was exposed to and carefully developed the rest. I’m particularly impressed with the point of view of the speaker. If she was referring to the myth, then it’s only natural she kept the third person omniscient point of view. However, if she was inspired by the painting of Icarus drowning, I wonder why she didn’t use another point of view for example, the point of view of Icarus or Daedalus. I wonder what else she could’ve explored if she used a different point of view. Throughout the poem the voice of the narrator was very consistent and strong. I enjoyed how the narrator lightly sprinkled in detail till the final moment, which punched me in the stomach, “This childhood fascination/ Of the sun wasn’t the only thing/ He needed to be afraid of”. I love the use of line breaks Tolbert used in her poem. Her use of line breaks worked in her advantage when it came to controlled ambiguity. For example: “Falling, he reached out/ For his father, too far/ Ahead to hear his son calling out to him”, And: “The weight of an entire lifetime/ Left to live. Hours pass, / Minutes lingering on like stains on satin sheets,”. Tolbert really did a great job executing craft in this poem. I was engaged throughout even at the last line I wanted more. This poem inspired me because I was connected the craft. I’m also inspired by Madonna and Child by Larry Fullwood. This painting is so eye grabbing. I love the basic colors he used to compliment each other. The blue in the background gives off an innocent/ angelic vibe for the baby and Madonna. What particularly caught my attention is the people in the painting are African American. This piece is depicting them in a positive light, and that’s why I like this piece so much. It inspired me to write a positive poem about the African American community. There’s a great selection of art and writing out in our Fall Edition I’m sure you’ll easily find a piece of writing and/ or art to inspire you so feel free to explore. - La'Mirakle Price, Junior Managing Editor