Publication?

A literary publication is any magazine, journal, or website that publishes creative work for an audience. We have classics like The Paris Review or newer publications like the website Electric Literature.

For most of you in this class, your goal for the future may be to become a published writer yourself or to work in publishing. For example, the writer Toni Morrison was a senior fiction editor at Random House until 1983, a couple years after her fourth book was published.

Even if these are not your goals, creating your own literary publication can not only be fun, but helpful practice in using revising and editing, organization, and using your critical creative thinking skills, among other things.

Instructions

Here is the rundown:

1. In groups, you will create a literary publication. This can be a journal, a magazine, a website, etc.
2. You will be grouped by your “In-Progress Drafts,” either by genre or theme/message.
3. You are expected to include a Transformed Draft of your piece in the publication.
4. All other decisions will be up to you and your group – with the aim to fit your rhetorical situation — and should be explained in your cover letter.

Elements to Consider

Below, you will find details about the assignment from Steve Healy, a creative writing instructor who described this assignment in the anthology Creative Writing Pedagogies for the Twenty-First Century.

“Content

Among your first tasks as a publisher will be to decide what content to publish. You can publish original poetry, stories, creative nonfiction, plays, etc. written by yourself, or solicited from others. (If using published work by authors, you can add a “previously published in… page” to give credit.)

You’re also welcome to expand your definition of what “literary” is, publishing graphic/comic work, an erasure, a list of imaginary poem titles abandoned by Sylvia Plath, or just about any other creative work that involves language.

You can also publish anything that falls into the broad category of literary criticism: commentary, analysis, reviews, best-of lists, recommended-reading lists, etc. And you can go even further outside the box of original literature or criticism, generating some kind of oddball archival or information-gathering project.

Ask yourself, what really needs to be published? What kind of content do you think will be particularly relevant and provocative to an audience? Think about your Rhetorical Situation: Purpose, Audience, and Genre.”

“Medium

Your publication can take many different forms, and because you don’t have the time or resources to use costly state-of-the-art printing services, you’ll need to use your imagination. Your publication can be either in print or digital/online. It can take the form of a small book (e.g., a chapbook), a magazine (or “zine”), a pamphlet, a newsletter, a poster, a series of postcards, a website, a blog, an audio recording, or any other form that you can imagine actually producing. You don’t even need to be able to name what the form is, as long as it can be defined loosely as a publication.

If you really use your imagination, almost any physical object can become a publication. For example, you could remove the matches from a matchbook, replace them with tiny pages, and call it a published book. Perhaps you can recycle some discarded materials and turn them into an eco-friendly publication. Particularly in the midst of so much public discussion about the death of the book, making a totally unique-looking publication out of unlikely materials could be especially provocative.

If possible, you should plan to make multiple copies of your publication to distribute to the entire class. I will also allow you to make a one-of-a-kind artist’s book, however, if it is substantial and interesting enough to be “one-of-a-kind.” And of course, a digital or on publication cannot be distributed as a physical object, but I’ll expect you to present it to the class with whatever technology is required.”

Presentation

For our final, you will present the publication to the class. The presentation will be around 20 minutes per group. You will explain a bit about the group’s thinking and then each group member will read something (like an open mic).

Submission and Review

You will submit a messy draft for peer review. Submission will depend on the medium of your publication. Then, you will submit the transformed draft of this publication — with a cover letter from each group member or a purpose statement from the group – for your final.

Due Dates

1. A plan for the project is due Week 13, day 25
2. A messy draft is due week 14, day 27
3. The transformed (final) draft and presentation are due Week 15, day 28.

Documents