EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION TO PONY EXPRESS(IONS)

A warm welcome to each of our new readers. We’re just as new as you are. As you can see, we’ve embarked on a journey with our first issue of Pony Express(ions). It’s our intention to introduce you to some very good writing from our current graduate students and alumnae of the Master of Liberal Studies Program. We want you to know what we do. Perhaps you will wish to join us.

In addition to our student writing, we will, from time to time, enjoy the work of guest writers coming to us for our Annual Writer’s Feast. This issue’s guest is the playwright, Mark Medoff. Mark’s work has received astonishing accolades, and perhaps most for his well-known plays, Children of a Lesser God and When You Comin’ Back Red Ryder? Spend some careful reading time with this craftsman who has some very sage advice for all of us. It will be our pleasure, as well, to introduce you to our MLS faculty through interviews conducted by MLS students.

As said, we want you to know what we do; thus, our writings here reflect the broad, interdisciplinary approaches we take to our MLS academic world: fiction, poetry, short plays, creative nonfiction, and research – representative of the journey all of us take, in text books and in lives. Great appreciation to our writers in this, our inaugural edition. The work is superlative, and we ask that all of our MLS colleagues consider submission possibilities for our 2nd issue. We’ll look forward to reading them with care.

The “cover” for our online journal is entitled Waiting for Odysseus and concerns Homer’s warrior returning to his home in Ithaca following a twenty-year absence. We’re all on journeys in differing ways, even the “waiting” Penelope. We would be pleased to have you choose Pony Express(ions) as a companion on your personal journey.

Gary D. Swaim, Pony Express(ions) Executive Editor”

Digital Art:
“Fall Colors,” inspired by. . .what else. . .longing.  Longing for cool breezes and bright, falling leaves in the midst of a Dallas summer.