Greetings dear reader!
Welcome once again to confetti.
For this edition, our fifth installment, we trundle out of semi-winter blinking and peeking toward a bright, new Spring. Time once again for poetry, prose, plays and stories.
Contained within our digital pages is a new collection of eclectic expressions. Poems, fictions, and some new feature articles as we find great talent in the neighborhood of Westchester Writers Workshop and the Somers Library. We continue to gather from a myriad of countries including Ireland, India, Ukraine, and Nigeria and our selection includes a vast variety – some new faces and some familiar.
Writer and visual artist Janice Boland contributed a delightful water coloresque for our cover. Lisa O’Neil Guerci covers a local poetry open mic with artistic flair, and we continue our search for the sublime and extraordinary.
If I detect a common theme in our poetry submissions, I will say many are personal searches and self-discoveries with metaphysical and universal implications. Nature is prominent, and dystopias ever present, but the human spirit prevails throughout. Our prose selections include some flash and micro-fictions, and a play starring Oscar Wilde as a hologram!
Our featured author is also a poet who over the years has published fiction and poetry. William Teets leads his own writers’ group in Michigan and is no stranger to the pages of confetti. Many know of his debut novel, Upside-down: One on the House, but two books of poetry and another hard-hitting fiction about a troubled urban youth, Reverend Went Walking, quickly propels this artist to the category of local favorite. To call his style “in-your-face,” “raw and gritty” speaks nothing of how crucified platitudes and stripped away sentiment make way for profound, naked feeling, thoughtful and powerful allusions, and soul wrenching reflection.
One aspect of our magazine we find paramount is the ability for you, the reader, to interact with the pieces you read in confetti. We encourage and welcome feedback. Look for the form at the end of each page enabling you to leave feedback, comments, praise, and cheers. An email address is all that is required by our web platform, and we will never publish or share this information. We love to hear from you, and we know our contributing poets, writers, playwrights, and authors also thrive on the applause and feedback from the audience. Feel free to let your voice be heard in this interactive way.
What’s next for confetti? We continue our search for outré poetry and prose and we also invite artists to share images or photos. See our submission page for details. We are already receiving submissions for our Fall edition! Thank you to those who share their talent and stories and verse. Without you, our magazine could not exist. Our success is your success!
From all our selectors, our stolid and sedulous webmaster, and on behalf of Westchester Writers Workshop and the Somers Library, I would like to thank you for your submissions, your readership, and your support.
Enjoy confetti and celebrate eclectic!
~Gabriel Sebastian
Editor-in-chief, confetti
May 2023
Westchester Writers Workshop Magazine