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Jodi Gwendolyn Hernandez
While I create and write for self-satisfaction and would love to someday be compensated for my writing, my primary drive to create is the need for someone, especially young people struggling with their identities and the pressures of growing up, to identify and feel connected to something greater than their own experience. I want to encourage all people to follow the passions of what moves them and use their experiences, the good and the bad, to drive them forward to tell their stories and create their own art or expression and create a deeper connection with each other. I believe that writers are revolutionaries.
For me the “400” poetry sequence really connected because we are so often trying to make sense of tragedies and only seeing them from one side. We forget the trauma that took place before an act of violence and discard the perpetrator. For me, it was the human nature and perspective in most of the pieces I chose for publication. A professor in her lecture once discussed the gut punch that often accompanies a good poem or story: that is what I look for.
Evelyn Williamson
Why do I write you ask? I write because I must. Not because it is required of me, and not because I need the money. I must, because if I don’t, I’m doing a disservice to myself. It was suggested to me through the passing of notes in class my freshman year of high school that I should write. I dismissed the idea, but never forgot it. Through the years I wrote tidbits here and there, until one day it dawned on me just how much I love to write. That’s when I decided to go back to college and hone my skills in order to become the best writer I can be.
Whilst reading the submissions that were brought to me and my team, I found one piece in particular that I knew I had to publish because it brought me back to the simplicity of life. We all live in darkness and fear at times, and our search for happiness is constant and ever present. To me, “Omni Five” expresses that longing the best. In my reading of “Omni Five,” I found the child inside me that has never stopped searching for happiness and a friend to share it with. My hope to my readers is that they, too, will find their inner child and do what they must in order to bring happiness to themselves and appease the fear within.
Got My Eye on You, Jessica Sange