New Idea

I was reading the magazine bioStories publisher's description here and this is what it said: 

"bioStories offers word portraits of the people surrounding us in our daily lives, including the strangers we pass on the street unnoticed and those intimate to us who have been most influential and most familiar but who remain strangers to others. We particularly look for work that offers slices of a life that help the reader imagine the whole of that life; work that demonstrates that ordinary people's experiences often contain extraordinary moments, visionary ideas, inspirational acts, and examples of success and failure that prove instructive. In short, we believe every life displays moments of grace. bioStories wishes to share pieces of these lives and celebrate them." 

I suddenly got the idea of a magazine that focuses on slices of life; photographs of people going about their day and with poetry that either narrates the picture or relates to it. I want my magazine to reflect a diverse group of people with different people that all somehow relate to each other; with snippets of their stories that might represent a greater whole. 

My idea for how I will do this is to include 3 photographs with 3 columns on each of my pages with a poem, vignette, or short piece that resonates with the picture. I want the collection as a whole to flow altogether fluidly, as if different writers created them and pieced them together to form a greater narrative.

For the photographs, I've been thinking artistic, unique portraits of diverse types of people doing different things in their day. I will be gone to New York City for the first time this spring break, so I'm hoping to get inspired by the beauty and art alive within the city, and maybe I will take some snapshots that will turn golden. 

As for the writing, I’ve found great pieces that inspire this idea. One of them is Jennifer S. Deayton’s Wanderlust, which can be found here. bioStories’s Volume 4 Issue 2 was extremely inspiriting as well and can be found here. Moreover, a personal friend of mine has a writing style that I admire greatly: she illustrates short snippets of stories that form a collective whole. One of her pieces can be found here (I highly recommend this one.) 

References

BioStories Summer/Fall 2014 4.2 (2014): 1-133. BioStories. Web. 17 Mar. 2016.

Deayton, Jennifer S. "Wanderlust." AGNI Online. AGNI Magazine, n.d. Web. 17 Mar. 2016. 

Wilensky, Greta. "Rafael." Souvenir. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Mar. 2016.