Welcome to Helicon’s Spring Quarter Issue 2025!
If you’re reading this, it means that somehow, against all the odds, the magazine is published! And also, it probably means that I am graduated and no longer a student here. So for this letter, I wanted to look back at Helicon, what it means to me, and what it might mean to the people who are carrying it on.
The first thing that comes to mind are some of the things I say when I describe what we look for in a piece: we’re always searching for words and voices that say something new, something we haven’t necessarily seen before, or say something old in a new way. But there is something to be said, looking back, about the things we see every time we open our submissions, the ideas that stay in our heads and hearts and beg to be written about.
In my three years, I’ve seen quite a few pieces, and I can tell you that at Helicon, the same motifs show up over and over, varying a little with the seasons: walking down Sheridan Road, the books and poems we read in class, the stories and myths that we’ve grown up with. Each a little different, but many of the same ideas.
College students love the myths where you almost get what you want, and then fall short. College students love falling in love. College students love falling.
College students love their mothers and fathers, and kind of hate them too. They love riding the El. They love their friends. God, do they love their friends. They hate their work but they do it anyway. Sometimes they love that too.
And the genius of the works we get, and one that I didn’t appreciate until I started talking, was that somehow each piece approaches the exact same thing in a different way. Each one combines those familiar themes in a new equation that spits out an answer that I’ve never considered.
Fire. Blood. Mothers, fathers. Walking down Sheridan Road. You would think I would get tired of them. But I never do.
In a few weeks, I will not longer be a college student. I’m not going to do any of these things ever again, in quite the same way. But the good news is that Helicon will still be here, long after I’ve packed up all my suitcases and boarded that plane back to my hometown (another popular subject, by the way). The same community of people who love to talk, read, and write, the one that welcomed a scared little sophomore, will welcome a new community of readers and listeners. And I’m so glad that from wherever I am, I’ll be able to watch and support from afar.
So, for the very last time,
Happy Reading,
Mika Ellison,
Editor in Chief
The works published herein are the sole property of the writers and artists who created them. No work may be used without the explicit permission of the author or artist.
