BY DEBORAH NEDELMAN
Whidbey Life Magazine Publisher
November 24, 2016
For more than 30 years, I lived in Mukilteo, in a house with windows looking out across the water to Columbia Beach and Possession Point. I loved that house, and Mukilteo worked for our family, but the magic of Whidbey called to me in a slow, seductive song for all those years. When I finally yielded, it felt like coming home.
Something similar, though far less prolonged, happened in my relationship with Whidbey Life Magazine. I had only known WLM as a reader when Sue Taves offered me the position of publisher. I’d been on the editorial team of Soundings Review, the literary magazine of the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts, for several years and was editor-in-chief when NILA, and consequently Soundings, died. I wasn’t really looking for a new gig. But Sue and the editorial team worked their own brand of magic on me and, before I knew it, I found myself jumping onto the moving train that is WLM. Now that I’ve taken the leap, I am thrilled to be on this journey with a talented and dedicated team to help me guide Whidbey Life Magazine into the future.
Many of you have been reading WLM since it began, and you’ve seen it morph from an online resource for local artists to a semi-annual glossy print magazine with a website where we publish new content every week. It began as a purely volunteer effort and is now a professional endeavor. As we look toward the future, our plans include expanding our distribution and fostering greater inclusion of voices from all parts of our island. We also hope to upgrade our website to make your reading experience more engaging and user-friendly. Stay tuned!
Whidbey Life Magazine is an organic, evolving enterprise dedicated to celebrating the treasures of art, culture, and people of our island. It has always been our intention to facilitate connections across our island community rather than to highlight divisions, and as we move forward, we are committed to maintaining the values on which the magazine was founded. While we have encouraged writers to share personal perspectives through their blogs, we have never been a platform for political issues. If you’re looking for controversy and divisiveness, look elsewhere.
Whidbey is a place full of its own brand of complex, surprising stories we are eager to share with you. Whether we are writing about Oak Harbor’s 50-year-old playhouse, folks who brew beer from nettles, fiddle players who farm, elegant wearable art made from flowers, or the life of our local bees, we are building bridges, shining light on beauty, and embracing the glory of our island life.
This is what we plan to keep doing, through dark times and when the sun returns. We hope you’ll come along for the ride.
As you read this, my house will be filling with Thanksgiving aromas and my heart with gratitude to be able to spend this holiday with loving family, to live on this beautiful island, and to be part of this community of inspiring, creative, caring people. I wish you all the greatest of blessings of the holiday!
Before becoming publisher and editor-in-chief at Whidbey Life Magazine, Deborah Nedelman, Ph.D., MFA, spent most of her time writing, editing, coaching writers, leading writing groups, and collecting advanced degrees. There was even a time when she worked as a clinical psychologist and raised two kids. These days, she wakes earlier, gets to bed later, and has Whidbey Island on her mind most of the time.
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