Meet Madison Foster

We were lucky to catch up with Madison Foster recently and have shared our conversation below.

Madison, so excited to have you with us today. So much we can chat about, but one of the questions we are most interested in is how you have managed to keep your creativity alive.
Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine considers art of all types, including dance, music, stories, poetry, and visual art. Personally, my creative calling is in writing poetry, performing music (vocals & guitar), and designing layouts. As editor-in-chief of Carolina Muse (and as an avid reader), I consume a lot of creative work. So, producing my own work should come easily… but, it can be difficult to carve out time to nourish my creative endeavors. As a standard practice, I keep my own creative work out of the magazine (aside from my letter from the editor, of course).

One of the main ways I’m able to keep my creativity alive is by connecting with people around me. Our magazine is virtual, and my full-time job is remote, so I’m able to travel often. I am inspired by the people & places I meet along the way, introducing myself to new perspectives & stories and building a web of experiences to pull from. I also tend to journal more frequently when traveling, which is a handy place to store the random lines & concepts that pop into my head before they’re built out into a full poem.

After brainstorming and gathering experiences, the next step is less active—I practice meditation to quiet the mind and get in touch with myself and my emotions. It is in this quiet space that creativity is cultivated. It helps me hone in my focus, and words materialize soon after I set my pen to paper. Bonus tip is to utilize travel time without data (i.e. on a plane or service dead zone) to meditate & brainstorm.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
Ever since I was young, I’ve always loved reading and have been fascinated by the publishing industry. In college, I majored in English and minored in both communications and multimedia authoring, intent on starting my career at a publishing company. My summer internships, student involvement, and part-time work all supported this goal. However, plans changed when the pandemic flipped my last semester of college upside down and all but decimated relevant job openings.

After a summer full of writing cover letters and perfecting my portfolio, a friend asked me about my ten year plan. I told her about my dream to start my own literary magazine… to which she replied, ‘Why not start now?’ 2020 was the time everyone took their passion and ran with it, so what was stopping me? I soon started outlining a gameplan for my magazine, unsure of the logistics but sure of the intention behind it: To uplift creative voices of all types in my home states, South Carolina & North Carolina.

Now, I am founder & editor-in-chief of Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine, a multimedia arts magazine that showcases creatives in the Carolinas. With a team of volunteer section editors supporting me, we have published 12 issues over the course of a little over three years.

One of my favorite feelings is walking into an immersive art exhibit, one with sounds, visuals, and movement. I love the experience of being fully connected to the piece, living it & breathing it. This is how I intend for our magazine to feel. We publish dance, music, and spoken word poetry in addition to traditionally printed creative work (stories, visual art, and written poetry). In this way, we bring the creative work to life all within the bounds of our digital pages. In our print issues, we use QR codes to bring our readers into multimedia pieces. We don’t publish any specific genre or theme per issue; rather, we let the pieces speak to the variety of perspectives & backgrounds of our creators.

Our next issue will go live on our website on Saturday, February 10th at 9:30am, and we’ll celebrate on Instagram Live soon after at 10:00am (@carolina.muse). Our submission window opens again in February. We will also host our second annual in-person event, Arts Jam, in May, location TBD. Arts Jam involves art sale, poetry readings, and dance & music performances by our published creators.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Perseverance is an essential quality for those looking to start a literary magazine. You have to be able to see challenges as road blocks, not dead ends. Nothing will ever go right on the first try, and it takes a lot of research, guessing & checking, and time to reach a final product you’re proud of. You have to stay focused on your goal and work toward it a little bit each day.

When it comes to grammar and discernment when it comes to the selection & editing process, you must know the rules in order to break them. I recommend having in-depth knowledge of grammar (if you’d like to publish written work) and a background in creative writing, visual art, or whichever creative medium you decide to publish. This way, you know how and when to use these rules and break them. Writers and artists often break traditional “rules” to emphasize the message of their piece. Knowing these artistic nuances is key as you select & edit work for an issue.

Adobe applications have been my bffs when it comes to layout design, video editing, and photo editing. Whichever software you decide to use, you must know it intimately it order to utilize its features in your creative process. Again, this requires trial & error and a lot of research! If you don’t feel called to this aspect of editing, I do recommend finding a graphic designer who can support you or collaborate. This is something I’ve done through the years, as well!

Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?
We are consistently faced with the challenge of proving ourselves as a valuable place for dancers & choreographers to share their work. Our magazine is unique, and there are not many others which provide a platform for dance—not as a feature story or press release, just the art form itself. We don’t typically receive as many dance submissions as we do any other art form, but I feel that dance is an essential element of our magazine. It is, in essence, moving poetry. Pairing a dance piece with a story, poem, or visual art piece on a spread helps show the various ways we are able to express a concept creatively.

Our dance section editor and I have been working to increase awareness of dance in publishing by personal outreach to dance organizations and promoting the dance work we’ve published in previous issues. We’ve done a lot of ground work on social media, and our first event in June last year took our work to the next level by giving our dancers an in-person stage to perform and show our audience what our magazine is all about. We are constantly searching for new ways to accept dancers & choreographers into our publishing arts world and appreciate all those who have helped us build our community of Carolina creatives along the way.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
Estefania Cano (5 Sun Productions) – Header image and first four uploads Abbi Shengulette – Published sculpture example

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