Casey Forest
Writing Editor
Hello there!
We haven’t met before. Allow us to introduce ourselves: we’re Cicada Creative Magazine.
That’s a pretty vague statement, so let’s clarify. CCM is a lot of things. It is the seven Colorado State University students who decided to create a fresh space for voices to be heard. It is also all the creatives who answered our request for work with heart. It’s built from all the imagination in our city. It is a community collaboration, a trust-building experiment, and an inclusive place for anyone to share anything.
CCM is also brand new. This is the first-ever, from-scratch, ground-up volume of Cicada, and we want to thank you for tuning in. We have worked tirelessly to make sure that Issue No. 1 is, in essence, Cicada. That means supportive, non-bougie, welcoming, diverse. Everything here has been created with passion, and it’s our job to show it off. This magazine wouldn’t be possible without the courage of creators like you to make public their work, and we’ll always be grateful.
In the process of creating Issue No. 1, we’ve found the best way to sum up this semester’s collection is in the theme of Cycles & Seasons. Through the facets of this theme - movement, texture, distance - we’ve done our best to do justice to the variety of creative work that we’ve chosen to showcase.
In existing, we have all faced change and sought out ways to adjust, evolve, and learn. To us, Cycles & Seasons is a look into this adaption process and how it changes both us and our work. In small moments - such as a photo or poem - we are invited in to the fleetingness of imagination, into immortalized moments that will always remain the same, but whose meaning will change as the world around them shifts and stretches. Cycles & Seasons manifest everywhere, from the tube worms living on the ocean floor to our relationships with mother figures. In living, we find ourselves contextualizing these changes, and Issue No. 1 of Cicada lays bare the human nature of emotional seasonality.
This is only the beginning for us, and we’re expecting things to change. Issue No. 1 is the start of our own Cicada cycle, and growth is going to happen. That being said, some things will never change about us: we will always strive to be inclusive, supportive, and community-oriented. We will always work to honor and make space for the creatives in Fort Collins. We are here to be a platform for creative work that doesn’t fit into boxes. We want you to get to know us, so pop over to the Contributor’s Section and take a look at all the creatives who have chipped in. And hey—thanks. We’ll see you next semester for Issue 02.