About AC
What's the mission of the cafe? Where have we been? And where is the cafe headed?
 

The cafe has expanded its aim to also provide the best possible community environment for poets, writers, and readers to come together, interact and act as a support center for these people.
 

The Arcanum Cafe actually got its start from a community literary magazine published annually in the suburbs of Chicago, entitled the Arcanum Literary Magazine (1993-95). The magazine was founded and headed by me, Joe Lavigne. Having moved half way across the country a couple years after the magazine's demise, I finally launched a new and improved web version and called it the Arcanum Cafe.

Since its first days on the web, the Cafe has grown considerably. Once looking like a small personal homepage with about 2 or 3 pages, the Cafe now has thousands of pages of great content. It has gone from the poetry of one person to at some points having hundreds of poets' works posted at a given time. And now the site offers a wide variety of features of interest to writers and readers alike.

On November 21, 1998 Arcanum Cafe registered its own domain name, www.arcanumcafe.com, and moved from limited AOL webspace to a new, growing webhost. This was all in attempt to let the cafe grow and expand, such as the inclusion of multiple forums, interactive features and room to spread the wings a bit. The official launch of this new url was January 3rd, 1999 and we haven't really looked back since then.

Of course it continues to take the support of thousands of visitors, hundreds of contributing poets & writers, and a small staff of great people to make this site happen. And we can only hope that we will continue to be an online home for the literary minded and creative souls that frequent this parcel of net space while gradually expanding the services offered here.