I've been a reader, and fan, of Poetica Magazine much longer than I've been its Blog Editor.

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In early 2009, I received an email from the publisher of Poetica, Michal Mahgerefteh, in which she asked her readers to provide comments on the website. Since I was already a blogger, I provided my comments regarding the quality of the blog on the website, which, at the time, was largely nonexistent. Suddenly, I was the Blog Editor.

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I'd always been a reader. For the eight years prior to that time I'd been a writer as well. In the last nearly two and a half years now I've had the great privilege to be the editor of this blog.

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Sometimes when you begin something, your original vision for what it will be changes over time. That's what happened with JWorld Cafe. I'd originally planned to write all the blog posts; an editor in name only. But a few months into it, as I was about to go on vacation, I decided to run an Open Forum in which we'd post the work of our readers. It was then that I discovered our readers had a lot more to say than could be contained in the Open Forum. Of course - our readers were writers.

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The guest bloggers we've hosted on JWorld Cafe have offered glimpses into everything from their creative process, their artwork, and their writing habits, to how they learned to write again after loss or illness.

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Through them I learned to try again too. In the year preceding becoming Blog Editor I had been through some serious disappointments trying to get my book published, both with the agents who represented me and the publishing houses involved. Reading the stories of our readers - our writers - taught me to try again too.

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This post marks the beginning of a hiatus for the blog and for myself, as I'll be promoting my book over the next few months.  

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Thanks, as always for reading JWorld Cafe, the Poetica Magazine Blog.

Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

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Linda Pressman is the Blog Editor of Poetica Magazine and the author of the newly released memoir, Looking Up: A Memoir of Sisters, Survivors and Skokie. Her work has appeared in publications including Brain, Child Magazine, the the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix, and Mizmor L’David, a anthology of work by children of Holocaust Survivors. She blogs at Bar Mitzvahzilla and at Open Salon and lives in Scottsdale, Arizona with her husband and two children.