Dear reader,

After four months of sunshine and wild orange daylilies to greet me on my walk to the bus stop, your newspaper has found itself back in your hands – or perhaps, this is the first time we find ourselves acquainted. After a summer spent carefully preparing and planning, gratitude consumes me: the September 2026 publication is out!

As I write my first letter from the editor, I cannot help but think of the girl I used to be. A storyteller, that’s who! Under the very desk I report from, you may still find piles upon piles of storybooks, circa 2011. And, those who know me know I am passionate, stubborn – a list of unattractive qualities continues – but all my traits are somehow interlinked with love of writing. Be it about my day, my desires, the world around me, or the love I have inside me, I most often write about what has me vexed: politics and social issues are what fuel my soul and drive me to be a journalist.

My English teacher in the ninth grade once gave me some advice: “If you love your mind, you should nourish it with books.” I hope that The Plant can provide that comforting presence – something to be relied on month-to-month. And, if there is anything I hope you take from these pages, it is this: put into the world what you wish to get out of it. Read what challenges you. Write what moves you. Create the world you wish to live in. Give love where you can.

Perhaps that begins with publishing a piece with us. Perhaps it starts with sharing your art. Whatever it looks like, I hope you find something of yourself in these pages – and maybe even, like me, make the discovery that, the more you write, the more you become yourself.

Yours,

Chloe

Dearest gentle reader,

September, to me, is the month where we can most feel the changing of a season. We are stepping into a threshold, going up moss covered steps into something a little more enchanted. It’s my personal favorite season, a time where we can let ourselves believe, just for a second, that there is still a hint of magic in the world. This section of the year is when everything comes alive for me, contradictory I know. But life seems to glow a little brighter as we get back into the groove of school, the humdrum of social life picking back up and most of all, it seems to be the time in which my thoughts feel at reach.

We can never truly know ourselves; but every now and then we reach our hands down into the still, dark waters of our subconscious and pull out a new thing from the depths. When all things are putting on a show for us as they’re slowly dying, my thoughts lie closer to the surface and I can see myself a little clearer. And to me that means writing, being creative, and trying to learn as much as I can before the world and I reach our final hibernation. 

While I don’t know your creative habits or how the seasons speak to you, I hope this first issue of the Plant can give you something. My biggest wish is that it could be a source of magic for you:  that something in it catches your eye, gets you to know yourself a little more, makes you want to create, or at least teaches you something you didn’t know before. I know this issue and the wonderful people that have contributed to it is for me.

Orion