I love the small size of Swarthmore. It has innumerable benefits such as small classes, being able to maintain intimate friendships, and knowing about all the events and opportunities available. But for literary magazines, it’s a tight squeeze. Ourstory has been around for almost 10 years, I believe. Yet this year, we have been struggling to receive submissions. We’ve been creative and tried every marketing tactic possible, but it boils down to writing: we can’t force people to express themselves.
Small Craft Warnings hasn’t had much trouble, but they have broader category of submissions. The problem is that there is such a diversity of literary magazines: SCW (all-inclusive lit mag) Enie (ñ) (Spanish), Ourstory (Multicultural), Remappings (Asian-American), Mjumbe (African/Black community) Scarlet Letters (Women’s), Spike (Humor) but a small population of students willing to submit their work! Some editors noted that the dearth of submissions is unique to this year, but they just don’t know why. Coming from a small high school, our lit mag faced similar problems and it’s a bit frustrating to go through this again. Hopefully next year will be better.
Traveling here on Sunday was worse than usual. My flight was delayed and I decided to take the Septa from the Airport to Swat. That meant I switched trains from the R1 to the R 3 with luggage that did not fit in between the seats. I thought I had a rough time until I saw Arlys. He had come by bus from Boston to Philly and just missed the R3 at 9. On weekends, it comes every two hours after a certain time, so he came in all worn out around midnight. Oh, the adventurous lives of college students.
Monday was classes all day, Tuesday was Phoenix all day (don’t download illegally, the RIAA is watching YOU, check out the online version this week’s edition of the Phoenix), and by Wednesday everyone was exhausted. Happy Thursday, almost Friday!
you put all of them on paper?!? and why should there be so many of them?