The Warren Literary Art Journal was released last week, and you might have seen it's enigmatic cover in various places around campus. Inside the journal is poetry, short stories, photography and other art works from students attending Bloomsburg University.
The journal was created for students by students. The editors of the journal this year were Hannah Jones and Alyssa Wernham, whose role in the journal was to organize and design the pages of the publication. All other students on staff are part of the review boards for the submissions.
The art journal allows submissions to be made until the end of the fall semester, and allows submissions of prose, poetry, play scripts, fiction, non-fiction and memoirs. Art is submitted digitally and must have at least 300 resolution.
"We had well over a hundred and fifty pages of prose submitted and fifty pages of poetry," said Hannah Jones, an editor on the journal. Jones said that the amount of submissions received this year was the largest of the past three years which she has worked on the journal. Many students submit pieces to the journal, some students submit pieces among multiple mediums, like Ballie Award winning Joshua Myer, who has both his award winning critical essay and his poem "The Delaware," published the journal.
The journal for students who have work in it, as Jones put it, gives them "the opportunity to get their work published, to share it with a broad student audience, and to get involved in the publishing process."
Something interesting about the journal is that they do not censor or editorially pressure authors. "We would never turn down a quality piece because of language or content, nor would we return it to the author to be ‘toned down,'" said Hannah Jones, one of the editors. It is clear that the journal that it isn't interested in censoring the pieces or authors. Some pieces like Amber Tallon's "Her Teeth Are Like Rotten Doll's Faces" are definitely not "safe" in the sense that they challenge people's tastes.
Throughout the literature, there is work done by fine student artists. The images take up either whole pages by themselves, or are sometimes inserted into an article's body to break the text up. Some people might think but Warren is strictly a literature journal since it's advisor, Dr. Claire Lawerence is from the English department, but as Jones put it, "both the written word and visual presentations are art, so I suppose it's appropriate to appreciate both within the same publication."
Aside from being a place for student art, the journal is also the formal announcement of several awards. The Savage Poetry award winning "The Dizzy Game" by Laura A. Thomas appears in the journal. "A Lesson in Room J12" by Christina Beckham was awarded the Winner of the 2010 Fuller Fiction Award.
Joshua Myer won the Ballie Award for the Critical Essay for his critical essay "Victorian England: Foundations of Politicized Feminism in Popular Aesthetics." The English Department Award for Creative Non-Fiction was given to Jessica Weber with her short story "How The Ghosts Get Out."
Students wishing to join the art journal for next year should contact Hannah Jones or Dr. Lawerence, but can also find the meetings through their "Warren" Facebook group.
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