The winter 2020 edition of Life and Legends is ready, and I am thrilled to present it to our readers with the trust, it brings somewhat joy to you at the end of a very long year marred by the Pandemic.
I feel a sense of accomplishment, despite the fact we were unable to bring the summer edition to our readers under the circumstances followed by the Pandemic, forcing us to excuse our volunteers and long-serving Associate Editor, Robbi Nester. Life and Legends will always remember them for their contributions.
On the positive side, I am pleased to announce two new additions to Life and Legends’ editorial team, Lopamudra Banerjee and Megha Sood, who will join us from January 2021 and serve as the Associate Editors. I so look forward to working with them.
Moreover, I’m delighted to share that, in our future editions, we will also publish fiction, non-fiction, and micro book reviews. The new features added to Life and Legends are – DESTINATIONS, LIGHTHOUSE and BEDROCK. The CULTURAL DIPLOMACY section will be dedicated to publishing articles and reports on the programs and events in collaboration with our partners. We encourage writers to check out the new features and submit their works accordingly.
We welcome the proposals to collaborate to help serve our literary community at larger scale. In 2021, Life and Legends will be presenting, “Women Poets Sharing their Success Stories & Immigrant Experiences Through Poetry,” event in collaboration with the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. Check out the details on our EVENTS page.
In 2020 the publishing world has been inundated by Pandemic Literature. Therefore, it was a conscious choice not to make COVID-19 the theme of the current edition of Life and Legends. Instead, we announce to do a Post Covid edition to bring a fresh new wave of poetry and stories of hopes and promises to give farewell to the darkest time our generation has seen. We will be accepting submissions for our next edition from February 1st, 2021.
Since the outbreak of Pandemic in Wuhan, China, in the winter of 2019 to the winter of 2020, we have come to a full circle. Our older generation has suffered the most from the rife and unfortunately we have lost many creative geniuses to the Virus. “Life and Legends” pays tribute to Hindi poet Mangalesh Dabral, who lost his battle to Corona on December 9th. I had the opportunity to interview him for Life and Legends in 2018 and publish his poetry in translations, featured in this edition again in his honor.
Very soon we will look back to 2020 and remember it as The Year of Awakenings, for it has made humankind realize its limitations, as well as the potential and our responsibilities as the defenders of the universe.
We wish everyone a blessed holiday season and a happy new year ahead.
Kalpna Singh-Chitnis
Editor-in-Chief
Life and Legends
December 15th, 2020
@AccessKalpna
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