Off Center: A Creative Magazine for the MTSU Community

A Letter from the Editor-in-Chief

Writing is a spring storm—a gentle cadence, rain chattering like teeth in the crackle of
lightning and the tremble of thunder, struck charges cracking like a blown fuse.

Ernest Hemmingway once said that writing is bleeding at the typewriter, that it’s splitting
your soul open and spilling it onto the page, but I have always preferred to think of writing as a storm.
Sirens of inspiration, strikes of distraction, warnings of approaching deadlines, and the rain—well,
a drought cannot be cured until the water flows. There are the ups and downs so fitting to the weeks
of spring, when everyone’s seeking shelter and sneezing into tissues, when writers order another cup
of coffee and scribble onto notepads in creative surges at midnight. Then, there is the result: spring
flowers, so nostalgic of childhood and summer romances, and completed projects. The tempest of
creativity that creates beauty, when we share experiences and see a piece of ourselves in one another.

Together, we experience storms as much as the fluorescent result—daffodil and hyacinth, iris
and ivy, narcissus and laurel in whites and yellows and purples and greens. A series of rose bushes
blossom at the gate of an apartment complex, and the scent of freshly cut grass warms the early
morning routine. Artists see beauty share its blossoms—pinching, plucking, and pulling petals into the
literary, visual, and audio.

My goal for this edition of Off Center was to celebrate the different stories of our artists, and
the different places from which the creators are working—some who have been published and some
who haven’t. The magazine is a representation of who we are: various writers, writing styles, and
cultures, whose stories remind us that we are more alike than different and that the result is always
worth the effort.

May you find a piece of yourself—your own experiences, knowledge, and passions as you read
through the magazine.

Angela Benninghoff