The New Plains Review staff, a student-run literary journal at the University of Central Oklahoma, is proud to have received hundreds of submissions from all over the world. Keeping with the University of Central Oklahoma’s goals of both excellence and diversity, it is our mission to share with our readers a selection of fantastic works from a diverse number of authors and artists throughout the world. We are eager to help these creators broaden their audience and re-inforce the importance of the arts in our everyday lives. It is also with these hopes of transformation and a broader perspective we present the Spring issue for 2015 to our readers. These selections give a glimpse into the authors and artists minds be they depictions of coping with everyday life, either in the past or the present, or growing more aware of the world at large. The works selected in this issue of the New Plains Review and its special UCO@125 section strive to show glimpses of the human experience from a variety of different times and viewpoints and the ever evolving human spirit. This year, the University of Central Oklahoma is celebrating the 125th anniversary of its opening. As a result, we have added a special section to this issue of the New Plains Review, which is dedicated to the celebration of UCO@125. The University of Central Oklahoma is one of the first institutions of higher learning to be established in Oklahoma; as a result, it is one of the longest running universities in the southwestern United States. The University is still going strong today, and it is dedicated to instructing through the methods of transformative learning. This method aims to not simply teaching students, but to teach them through opening their minds to other possibilities and viewpoints - to not only make them better scholars, but to make them better people. We hope that our journal is an inspiration to all our readers.
