By Mattie Lugar | Photo by Elizabeth Bartholomay
One of the most anticipated literary events of the year was held this past Wednesday, April 15 in Stretansky Hall. Making Public is a time to come together and celebrate the accomplishments of our seven different literary magazines along with a joint launch party for students to collect the new editions as they enter our literary atmosphere.
This is always one of my favorite events of the year, and to me this was an extra special year as I not only helped organize the event, but I was also partially responsible for some of the PR materials you may have seen floating around campus. I helped the layout and design of both the program handed out at the door and our lovely poster. These are things I am so incredibly proud of and made Making Public a little more special for me. I also couldn’t have done it without my other FUSE Co-PR Chair, Logyn Cammarota.
For our theme this year, we settled on the cosmos of the literary community, as with having so many different magazines on campus, it truly does feel like we are in our own little galaxy. The evening opened with Dr. Catherine Dent and Dr. Jessica Masterton welcoming everyone to Making Public before handing things over to FUSE to officially start the event.
The event itself ran for a little over an hour and was moderated by Mea Cellitto, followed by a reception in the Benjamin Apple Meeting Rooms with refreshments and copies of the different magazines available for people to take.
Each of the different magazines were given the opportunity to speak about their new and upcoming edition, their accomplishments throughout the year, reveal their covers, and hand out awards. One of my favorite parts of Making Public is not only seeing the cover reveals, but also getting to hear about all the amazing writers that get published each year.
We always like to go in order of serious to silly, and the order of magazines were as follows: Rivercraft, Essay, Apprentice Writer, Sanctuary, Flagship, Gingko, and The Squirrel. I’m slightly biased towards The Squirrel as I am one of their staff writers, but I always love that we close with something goofy. Every year it’s tradition that an article from our upcoming edition is read as a small teaser of what’s to come, and both Haley Seitz and Lorelei Jacobson gave us a very accurate news report. Stay tuned this week for our next edition!
At the reception, people had the opportunity to fill out a punch card at the bottom of their program for the chance to be entered into a raffle for a gift card to Midtown Scholar in Harrisburg. At the FUSE table specifically, we were giving out stickers and bookmarks designed by Logyn Cammorata and had a personality quiz designed by our treasurer Olive Lambert that people could take to find out which magazine they were.
I’d like to give a huge shout out and thanks to my other FUSE executive members; this was by far the best Making Public we’ve ever done, and all of this wouldn’t have been possible without every one of you.