When you are young you say things like: the first eighteen years are the difficult ones. But what if these eighteen years are ...dog years, alas one hundred and twenty-six years! However, here we are not talking about a dog, are we? We are talking about Ovi magazine and life online. So we might as well talk about centuries instead of a dog century.

Ovi magazine is eighteen years old with the emphasis on the world old. Old means wisdom and experience but also means tiredness and weariness. Old means that while you will never openly admit it, you have started counting what is left. old means that the world around us changes fast, often reminding you that being old might means that you miss/lose things, here and there. And sadly the same applies to the real people, the living and breathing individuals behind the virtual life of an online magazine.

So let’s talk about the... past. For eighteen years Ovi stood for democracy, freedom and choices, against any kind of discrimination and prejudice. We fought in every chance Nazism and fascism, racism, xenophobia, homophobia and corruption. We stood by the poor and hungry, we often shown our care for the children and the suffering. And we survived a lot of hits during these years, collective and personal hits.

I also feel that we succeeded in our secondary aim which was to give space to writers, poets, illustrators, artists, to express themselves freely, establish or strengthen their trademark and reach a global audience as far we could reach with Ovi magazine and the social media network that supports the magazine.

There is still a lot out there to fight for and one thing I personally always wished was Ovi’s stand and attitude has inspired others to follow; hense I’m always happy when another online magazine reaches just to say that we are not alone.

There is also the bitter sweet feeling that Ovi has always promote poetry and literature, recognized for that but also often mentioned as one of the very few established online magazines that strongly support poetry and short stories literature. The fact that there are “few” supporting poetry and short stories is a very bitter feeling and I honestly hope this could change.

But times change and we live in an after-Covid, after-Trump era where and I’m really sorry to say but nothing will be the same again and changes are not always good or evaluating.
But let’s stick to the things we know.

Ovi magazine has a small present for its eighteenth birthday. There is a new concept included, a bookshelves concept that eventually will include all the eBooks in the bookshop pages and has already included many more eBooks, classic and new, some of them from our members like Abigail George, or Richard Stanford. EBooks with a variety of themes, from mystery and sci-fi to poetry (of course), philosophy or cartoons. A lot new, some old, most remade, a lot more to come soon, please do have a look, HERE!
always for FREE!

When somebody celebrates eighteen years of life the most usual wish is ...welcome to adulthood, but adulthood is something Ovi magazine met a long time ago.

Still, there is one thing I wish to say: THANK YOU ALL!