There’s No Place Like Home

By: Javacia Harris Bowser, See Jane Write Magazine Founding Editor

“It was all a dream/I used to read Word Up Magazine/ Salt ‘n’ Pepa and Heavy D up in the limousine…”

— Notorious B.I.G., “Juicy”

Christopher Wallace (better know as slain ‘90s rapper Notorious B.I.G.) would thumb through Word Up magazine and fantasize about one day being a hip-hop star. I spent my teen years poring over the pages of Essence Magazine dreaming of being a media maven.

I had it all planned out. After studying journalism in college I would move to New York and soon get hired at Essence where I’d work my way to the top to become editor-in-chief like my idol Susan L. Taylor. Then, after I’d truly made my mark on the magazine that had changed my life and shaped my dreams, I would start a magazine of my own.

Despite the fact that I earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism and snagged a features writing job right out of grad school, my magazine dreams were deferred.

My plans to live in New York faded once I fell in love with and married a man who preferred living in a smaller city.  And as the print journalism industry began to suffer, as magazines folded and newspapers laid off staff, the idea of starting a magazine became laughable.

Then I moved to Birmingham, Ala., or I should say, I moved back to Birmingham. This Southern city is my hometown and I love it from its rich red earth to the Vulcan statue that hovers over downtown. Nonetheless, the Deep South hardly seems the ideal place for an aspiring media maven.

But it was here that I started See Jane Write Birmingham, a networking organization for local women writers, bloggers and journalists.  I doubt an organization such as this one would have been very special in a place like New York, but here in Birmingham, the residents embraced my idea. I hosted panel discussions, workshops, and networking events and people showed up!

In Birmingham, I also became nearly fascinated with blogging and building online communities.

Throughout all this my idea to start a magazine lingered like the scent of honeysuckle in summer. I tried to ignore it, thinking the success of such a project would last as long as the drop of sweetness I plucked from these plants as a girl.

To start a magazine in 2013 would be crazy, I thought to myself. Then I found this quote in my one of my journals: “Crazy just might work.”

On Feb. 26 I declared on my blog WriteousBabe.com that I would start an online magazine and that magazine would be an online extension of the organization for women writers I started in 2011.

The idea for See Jane Write Magazine was born.

I am convinced that See Jane Write Magazine could have only come to be in Birmingham, in my hometown.  For that reason, the theme for our debut month is Homegrown. Articles published this and every month, however, are for and about women writers across the country, not just those in Birmingham. But most of the articles published this month will in some way be about celebrating the places we call home.

Birmingham garnered the nickname of “The Magic City” because it grew at such a rapid pace between 1881 and 1920. But I believe it deserves this nickname because it’s a place where dreams come true.