Making Public

By Brianna Luby, Arts & Entertainment Editor 

On Tuesday, April 23, the Seavey Writers Series hosted by the Writers Institute had its capstone event, Making Public.  

Making Public is an annual event held at the end of every spring semester. It features a Susquehanna alumni speaker, as well as staff from all the literary publications on campus. The event is considered the big launch of all the organizations’ print editions. Or in other words, making their work public, hence the name of the event. 

Dr. Catherine Dent, the director of the Writers Institute explained the event, “Making Public is an annual celebration of student writing, student editing, and student publishing. It’s part performance, and part launch party, sponsored by funds from the Department of English and Creative Writing, the Writers Institute, and the Seavey Writers Series. Each publication will present their newest creations, all work selected and edited over the past year. Awards will be given to writers. We always have a guest speaker, usually one of our alumni who addresses the role of writing, editing, and publishing with a focus on experiential learning and career development.” 

Noel Mungia-Moreno, one of the hosts for the event and staff member of multiple publications, said, “I lovingly refer to this event as the English and Creative Writing department Oscars.” 

The event was put together by the Forum for Undergraduate Student Editors (FUSE), a club surrounding literary topics on campus. Sarah Ledet, a member of the organization as well as an editor for Sanctuary Magazine, noted what made Making Public so special saying, “Making Public is my favorite Seavey Writers Series event because I get to see all the hard work my fellow students have put into their magazines in the spotlight. I talk to all the editors and designers throughout the academic year, and I know what they are working on vaguely, but there is something incredible about watching them all up on stage and getting to celebrate all their achievements. This year, I got to work with the other members of FUSE to plan the event, and it was so rewarding to see all our efforts pay off in a night assembled to celebrate our friends.” 

With FUSE’s organizational efforts in place, the night started off with the introduction of the alumni speaker, Patrick Thomas Henry, who is from the class of 2009. He works as a professor, as well as being the current fiction and poetry editor for Susquehanna’s Modern Language Studies. His work has appeared in multiple publications, but his first ever short story collection will be published by our very own Susquehanna University Press this August. 

Henry talked a lot about how important small publications, like the ones we host on campus, are in creating publics. “There are many publics, folded together in a 3D mesh that overlaps like foliage…We need these little magazines, we need these little presses,” he said. Henry emphasized that we are creating communities of interest, as well as communities of outreach, with our campus work.  

The SU Press staff has been working with Henry for weeks now, even attending the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference with him to promote his publication “Practice for Becoming a Ghost.”  

Janelle Cass, a TA for the press reviewed all the work they had done during the semester. “We’ve been creating a lot of handmade products from our students. We made handcrafted book designs that Amber Watkin made, crochet ghosts by Sarah Ledet, and a short story book made by me and Ellie Pasquale,” she said.  

All the press team’s hard work came to fruition at their launch event on Thursday, April 25th between 5:00 and 6:30pm. They held the launch party in downtown Selinsgrove to the theme “woodland woodsy witchy girl dinner” where mocktails, food, and other activities celebrated the hard work of the editing and design team, but also writer Patrick Thomas Henry. 

The first publication to present was Rivercraft, one of the oldest running magazines on campus. The organization publishes both literary fiction and poetry from undergraduate students. Ellie Pasquale, the managing editor of the magazine this year, had this to say about the new edition, “To look forward, we found ourselves reaching backwards first. We found an old version of Rivercraft named ‘Focus’. This history of our magazine had us looking for works in relation to each other with reflection on the world and past behind us.” The magazine’s newest edition, aptly themed Focus, was printed full of student work. 

Next, we had the creative nonfiction magazine Essay present their newest edition. While the magazine publishes the majority of its work online, the team still had their own history to share. Emi Harris, a staff member and presenter of the magazine, shared how they still create their print edition. “Last year we reintroduced a smaller version of Essay with just the winners of the submissions, and aptly named it ‘Pocket Essay.’” This year’s printed ‘Pocket Essay’ features another new addition, a brand-new stamp style logo, also a new piece of history for the magazine.  

Apprentice Writer, the third to present, is a magazine that publishes high school student work. While they had no awards or new editions to present, Brooke Mitchell shared some of the upcoming changes. “The fun thing about Apprentice Writer is we are in a transitional phase right now. We are moving from publishing in the fall to publishing in the spring. We are excited about the change,” she said. While they didn’t have an edition to present this year, they are excited to share the stage with their own print edition announcement in the years to come. 

Flagship is the literary magazine for abroad or travel writing. One of thesmaller magazines team, the staff had their work cut out for them trying to get the content together while travelling across the globe. Madelyn DeMatt from their team found it rewarding, saying, “Overall, it has been an amazing experience to work with people 6,000 miles away on one magazine.” Flagship’s senior editor also expressed how she felt about working with the magazine, as well as her last event with the team. “Last year, our head editor Hannah Mackey, said this was a bittersweet time. I don’t think I understood what she meant until now. Realizing this is the last time I will be working with Flagship is a sad but exciting moment.” 

The Small Press class for the spring semester also presented their work. The Patchwork Press staff were excited to share their rationale behind their submission decisions. They said, “At the start of the semester we decided to not choose our two chapbook submissions based on form. We wanted to have a mixture of poetry and prose and got 25 unique submissions.” Patchwork Press will be having their own launch party April 30th, at 7:00pm in the library, where they will be unveiling their printed editions.  

Gingko Magazine is an environmental literary magazine that started just this year. The team was very excited to be included in their first Making Public event. “We had a very exciting first year and we formed a web of undergraduates to bring awareness about environmental impact and sustainability,” said Ginko Magazine Web Designer, Hal Dittbrenner. Gingko recently revamped their website, have been working on cultivating a print edition, and started a social media campaign. They are hopeful to have a similar success story for next year. 

Managing Editor of Sanctuary Magazine, Emily Hizny said, “We are Sanctuary Magazine, the home for the weird, the unknown, and the wacky.” Sanctuary Magazine publishes prose, poetry, and artwork that steps outside of what is considered “normal.” This year they launched a new initiative, to add to their army of ghouls. “We started accepting submissions from everyone, not just undergraduates, and we reached as far as Alaska,” said Sarah Ledet, Junior Editor. Not only did they reach Alaska, but one of the prize-winning writers came from the state. The Sanctuary team was super excited to launch their fabulous new edition during the event.  

The Squirrel is a satire comedy magazine on campus. They just recently launched their third edition of the semester, and their fourth will be coming out next week. Senior Amber Watkin shared The Squirrel’s exciting year saying, “We had a pretty incredible and exciting year here in Squirrel world. We made merch, we hosted the first family feud, and last but certainly not least we turned ten, and marked a decade of us absolutely terrorizing this campus.” The senior editor read a passage from a past edition and passed down the “clown gavel” to the next senior editor for after she graduates. 

Making Public turned out to be a celebration of all things literary where a lot of hard work came to fruition. If you didn’t get to celebrate the literary magazines this year, there is always another year of hard work to celebrate next spring.