Dear Mused Readers,

I was delighted when Lisa asked me to write the letter to our readers for this issue of Mused. The Winter Solstice is my favorite time of the year because it is the holiday season all over the world. While working on the design and layout for our first holiday issue, I had to resist the desire to give every page a holiday theme.

However, we did want this issue to include a holiday message from the Mused staff to our readers and what better place to put that message than on the same pages that contain some of the letters from our readers? We truly enjoy hearing how Mused has touched your lives in some small way.

When I saw Erika Lyn Smith’s striking photograph entitled The Colors of Winter, with its non-traditional holiday color scheme, I knew that it was the perfect photograph to begin our holiday issue. The winter themed poems entitled White and Winter Dusk by Sharon Lasitter and the two untitled Haiku by Lisa Shea were a perfect match to go with this photograph.

It wasn’t difficult to choose the artwork for the cover of our holiday issue. Keegan by K. J. Ward is a Celtic knotwork full of symbolism, history and family ties. Love and family are things that we barely notice most of the year, as we rush through our daily routine. The holiday season is the one time of the year that we take the time to appreciate what we have.

This gift of love and family, and the possibility of losing it, is the storyline for Ruthe McDonald’s Five Days to Eternity. Many of our readers can personally identify with this couple's anguish. The poem entitled The Visit by Jody Zolli touched my heart as it spoke of loved ones, the passage of time and fading memories. This one´s for you, my pet by Mary-Anne Durkee is about creating traditions and passing memories along from one generation to the next.

Designing the layout for Mused is a labor of love that happens only four times a year and, with each issue, I have watched Mused evolve into an impressive literary magazine. The design decisions made along the way have reflected this growth and some pleasant growing pains. It was wonderful when the number of submissions had increased so much that the Table of Contents for the fourth issue needed to be a two-page spread! We here at Mused know that this would not be possible without all the hard work that the writers, photographers and artists put into their submissions.

Mused has not only grown in number of submissions but also in genre. We now have six sections to the magazine including Art and Photography, Poetry, Fiction, Non-Fiction, Plays and Interviews. When it comes to publishing Mused, we have grown in that area also. Our readers have three ways to read the magazine which include the online HTML and PDF versions, as well as the print version available at Lulu.com. I hope that you continue to enjoy every issue of Mused.

Happy Holidays,

Diane Cipollo
Art Director, Mused Literary Review

Winter Solstice 2008 Table of Contents | Send Us Feedback!