“The changing leaves look like elegant embers / Dancing passionately with the breeze.” These are the opening lines of a poem that won first place in a contest organized by The Alibi, a student-run online literary magazine at Seacrest Country Day School (FL).
The Alibi, founded by now-college freshman Abigail Timmerman, was first published in 2020 as a way to share her own work and to offer her peers an outlet for creative expression. “I wanted a platform where people could be able to just scroll and see everything, whether it be pictures, poems, or stories,” she says. To get the word out about the magazine, she hosted a contest to solicit writing and artwork and received 60 submissions.
The second issue of the magazine, published in winter 2020, was a collection of 10 college essays. Timmerman’s own essay, which explores the duality of her personality, is featured. She writes, “Hot and cold. Dark and light. Sweet and sour. With one comes the other. Except what happens when that is you? Like these antonyms, my world is one where flowers can grow from headstones, and bees can lay kisses on little children’s cheeks. Anything is possible where I come from.”
Now that Timmerman is at Florida Gulf Coast University, another group of students is overseeing the magazine. They have published several issues this year, including a collection of essays about character-building as well as artwork from a kindergarten class.
Check out the magazine here.
A drawing by Katie Mee Arpin, featured in The Alibi, a student-run online literary journal
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