Category Archives: Letter from the Editors

Letter From the Editors

Posted on by under Fall 2019, Letter from the Editors

Dear Readers,

Welcome to our eleventh issue of Voices & Visions. Our staff is excited to share this edition with you, and we hope you connect as deeply with the theme of “Home” as our contributors did. The issue explores the many meanings of “home,” expressed in poetry, prose, interviews, and photography. The authors and artists also come from all over the world, including Deli, India; Kigali, Rwanda; and New York City.

The idea of a home is often deeply personal. But “home” can also have communal meaning. It can refer to a family or a town or a country. We hope you enjoy the many ways in which the contributors to this issue-students studying at women’s colleges and high schools, globally- interpret the theme of home.

Aviva Green
Editor-in-Chief

Letter from the Editor: Spring 2019

Posted on by under Letter from the Editors, Spring 2019

Dear Readers,

Welcome to our tenth issue of Voices & Visions centered around the theme of “Power.” The journal is excited to explore this topic through the pieces presented, which span from poem to prose, drawing to photography. This issue in particular has a range of pieces from both domestic and international women’s colleges and girl’s high schools, which we hope provide our audience with unique perspectives on this topic. The issue includes work from both students and their teachers, from Rwanda and Australia, as well as from women’s institutions throughout the United States. We hope that these international perspectives on power will be interesting and illuminating to our audience.

We exist today in a world that is fraught with issues around power: Who has it? How can we give others access to it when it has been denied to them before? What does it feel like to be under the power of others?These questions take on more resonance when they are answered by writers and artists from women’s colleges and high schools throughout the world. . Through these submissions, we hope to present a range of intersectional perspectives on power, ones that not only illuminate the negative aspects of power, but also the ways in in which power exists outside of human structures and norms, a reminder that solutions can still be found in our art.

Camille Butera
Editor-in-Chief

Fall 2018: Letter from the Editors

Posted on by under Fall 2018, Letter from the Editors

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the ninth edition of Voices & Visions Literary Journal, themed “Perspectives.” This theme is specifically important to our journal this season, as we have brought in three new staff members, all Smithies: Kayla Sylvia, Martha Terry, and Lily Sendroff. Expanding our staff has added new ideas and points of view to the journal. This year, Voices & Visions has relocated to Smith College’s Lewis Global Studies Center, and we hope that new contacts there will expand our international reach. This past season, we were read by readers in over 110 different countries.

This issue has some exciting art, media, poetry, and prose from both girls’ high schools and women’s colleges. In the selection process, it was especially interesting to see the many directions in which our featured artists and writers took the theme of Perspectives. Perspectives can be imagined through points of view, through experiences, identities, through words and images. Additionally, the perspective you bring as an audience is crucial to how you interpret a piece, and openness to new perspectives leads to unique new insights.

We hope that our journal can act as a forum for these different perspectives, and that the works we present will allow you, our readers, to reflect on and expand your own perspectives.

Faith De Castro, Issue #9 Editor-in-Chief

Spring 2018: Letter from the Editors

Posted on by under Letter from the Editors, Spring 2018

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the eighth edition of Voices & Visions, themed “Transitions.” This theme in particular carries personal resonance for several of our staff members: Beth and Faizah are graduating, our first-year assistant editors, Aviva, Abby, Faith, and Camille, have taken on important roles in the production of this journal, and Professor Cohen, the journal’s founder, is taking on a new position as Director of the Lewis Global Studies Center at Smith. The journal itself is moving with her, and we are all excited to see what changes this transition will bring.

We are also excited to present our spring issue, comprising 15 written works and 14 visuals that express the fear and anticipation which transitions evoke, while celebrating positive aspects of change. Our contributors document physical, mental, and spiritual transitions that shape and define their lives. From the beauty of a receding tide to the complexities of gender, the writers and artists in this issue encourage us to embrace both constancy and uncertainty, heightening our awareness of the present moment while reminding us of the ways in which literature and art- themselves both enduring and evolving-buoy us in times of flux.

We hope these transformative works of art will inspire you to document your own transitions, whatever they may be. Happy reading!

Sincerely,

Brittany Collins, Editor-In-Chief
Beth Derr, Managing Editor

on behalf of the Voices & Visions editorial staff

Fall 2017: A Letter from the Editors

Posted on by under Fall 2017, Letter from the Editors

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the seventh edition of the Voices & Visions Literary Journal, themed “Environments.” It is an exciting time for our journal; in the last year, we expanded our submission pool to include alumnae who attended women’s educational institutions worldwide. In addition, we reached readers in 111 countries- over half of the world- with the help of publicity from the National Museum of Women in the Arts, women’s rights activist Gloria Steinem (Smith College ‘56), and Ms. magazine, the first mainstream feminist magazine produced in the United States.

As our readership grows, so does our editorial staff. We are thrilled to welcome three Smith College first-years to our team: Aviva Green, Abby Westgate, and STRIDE student Faith de Castro. Past Voices & Visions contributor Faizah Aziz Aditya, a senior at the Asian University for Women, located in Bangladesh, also joins our staff as an international assistant editor.

It is a privilege to not only share the works of women around the world, but to work with a growing team of women who make this publication possible. This fall, our staff found “Environments” a uniquely interdisciplinary theme, connecting politics, landscape studies, and stewardship with issues of home, change, and travel. Contributors’ works inspired us to think of the ways in which our surroundings, familiar or new, are ever-evolving- constructed by us, the people who comprise them. They are fluid rather than static; vulnerable more than dependable. It is our responsibility to honor their strength and their fragility- to use our voices and execute our visions for the environments in which we live.

But what is an environment? Is it physical? Emotional? What of our communities exist apart from us? And what of them are projections of our own internality?

This issue offers twenty-one written and visual works that interpret, observe, and critique that which surrounds. Our spring issue, which you can submit work for here, will concern transitions.

Happy reading!

Sincerely,

Brittany Collins, Editor-in-Chief
Beth Derr, Managing Editor

on behalf of the Voices & Visions editorial staff

Spring 2017: “Peace,” A Letter from the Editors

Posted on by under Letter from the Editors, Spring 2017

Dear Readers,

Welcome to our Spring 2017 issue of Voices & Visions, rooted in the theme of “Peace.” We are honored to present the works of twenty-one young women authors and artists who attend women’s high schools, colleges, and universities worldwide.

As editors, we were surprised to find that many contributions to this issue portray situations which are far from peaceful. Rather, the acts of seeking and grappling pervade. How to find internal peace amidst external tension? What is the delineation between peace and positivity? Do notions of peace exist only by contrast? Is peace an idea; a feeling; a mindset; a question? How might we practice peaceful resistance to affect change? This issue inspires us to ask such questions by providing a space in which women, often looked towards for making and maintaining peace, may shine a light on the nuances of the word- reminding us, perhaps, not to conflate peace with passivity.

Often found in the time-slowed moments which we call poems, or the meditative spaces of prose; the motions of drawing and painting, or the still-life subject of a photograph, peace- like art- is a product of creation. We would like to thank our authors and artists for adding depth to our perspectives and hope that you, readers, will start your own quests for peace here.

Sincerely,
The Voices & Visions Editorial Team