Welcome, Seekers!
July 1995, Denise Ruiz introduced Seeker Magazine to the internet. Early writers came from an internet group of fantasy role-players, including my son, David Langer, who wrote "Blind Crow's Path" for the first several years, and Brandon DeGeorge, who wrote a column about music and later "Jack's Beanstalk."
Novareinna became a regular contributor almost from the beginning, writing "Tales of the Tree" and later giving us folktales from many countries in her monthly column of "Tongues," which she contributed until June 2003.
Denise asked David to find out if I'd like to write something for Seeker, and so I began writing "SkyEarth Letters" in May 1997, which focused on books for several years but has now morphed to a personal essay style.
Denise discovered Harry Bushman (or vice versa, I'm not sure who really discovered whom) the next month, and Harry has been a constant provider of short stories ever since. For slightly more than two years, he also wrote "Stories from Westlake Village."
Denise passed the editorship to me in April 1997, and then (probably having gotten tired of my ever-lasting procrastination at getting the selections to her) handed over the whole magazine in March 1999. I learned basic html fast!
In October 1997, Susan Kramer joined the magazine with her columns on matters of spirit and growth which also include her photographs in the masthead. It was Randy Peyser, a Californian writer, who introduced Darius Gottlieb's wild and thought-provoking poetry to me, and Darius joined the magazine in April 2000 with his poetry pieces, frequently illustrated with his photographs, under the title of "Avant Soul: Rhapsodies in Words."
When I worked for The Wilderness Society in Denver, I met Peter Sawtell, the director of Eco-Justice Ministries and started receiving his electronic newsletter. I felt Peter did well at discussing religious beliefs in conjunction with environmental protection, and so have chosen to include one of his pieces each month since Fehruary of 2002.
My sister Marilyn began helping me with the magazine that winter, learning html herself in order to do so and taking a great burden from me in terms of not having enough time to actually prepare the pieces for the web. Or rather I should admit to letting procrastination give me deadline fever all too often. In 2003, as I was feeling burned out by email, the magazine went on vacation during July and August and I repeated that in 2004.
That's a brief history of the mag. I've been pondering what to do next. Something there is within me that does not want to stop producing new issues. I've considered looking for another editor to take it over and decided not to, and part of that is because of what Seeker Magazine is. And it is very much a representation of my subjective choices of all the materials submitted to the magazine.
So, here's the scoop: Seeker Magazine will go to a four-times-a-year publication. The issues will come out in July, October, January, and April.
There will be some format changes, I think. I will no longer have a "Poet Portrait" nor a "Gryphon's Nest." They've been long-running: I think the Nest started soon after the magazine began, and the Portrait within the first year. I may decide to have sections, with focus on the environment, on political activism, short stories, and poetry...and art. That's one subject which I used to include more of, thanks to Michael David Coffey. And I'd like to have bio blurbs (which I have purposefully kept at a minimum in the past) that tell at least where the writer is from and approximate age and work.
And here's another thing: I may set up a Seeker blog. One of the things I forgot to mention in my "brief history" was the message board which Denise had running until we switched servers in 1999. (Ask me about barn swallows...and flag burning, or, rather, don't.)
That is where Seeker Magazine will head toward next. Having gotten through ten years of issues, let's see, 120 minus 4 means that means there are 116 issues in the archives. And with a minimum of, say, 10 pieces per issue, that's 1160 articles. It sure would be nice to have a search mechanism in the Seeker archive, but unless I can persuade someone who is related to me to create it.....(and I don't mean my sister.)
Thank you all for being with Seeker, for contributing over the years, or for being a new or recent contributor. It's been a pleasure.
Cherie
Table of Contents
Letter to the Editor: