While in graduate school, 鶹Ƶ English Instructor Jennifer Murphy found joy in working on several literary journals. She even toyed with the idea of pursuing a career in the publishing industry before deciding on teaching.
“I was really lucky to be a part of rich literary communities that were already established,” Murphy said. “When I was looking to apply at 鶹Ƶ, I noticed they had some journals in the past, but there wasn’t a big literary presence now. So, I thought ‘Oh, that’s something I could develop when I come here’.”
This January, Murphy and 16 students in two of her fall quarter English classes — Creative Writing and Writers & Ideas — celebrated the publication of “Our Own Chaos,” a journal featuring poems, short stories and artwork created by YVC students, faculty and staff.
“I was hoping that students would get some real experience about what goes into editing a journal,” said Murphy. “And in addition to that, writing is a solitary act, but the literary journal component brings a community to that space. It helps bring people out of that solitary place where we do our writing.”
That attracted Haley Charles, who heard there was a chance to be involved in creating a literary journal for YVC while taking a Latinx literature course last spring.
“I thought that was a really interesting opportunity,” said Charles. “I work in the Writing Center, so I’m always around writing. But I’d never been involved in any kind of formal literary journal before this.”
Charles and the other students in Murphy’s courses studied the elements of genres such as poetry, memoir and fiction and wrote pieces in each genre as part of their coursework. Many of the submissions for “Our Own Chaos” came from students in responding to writing prompts for class, but submissions also came in from faculty, staff and other students.
“I think we were all kind of stunned at the number of submissions that we got and also the quality of the work,” Murphy said. “Seeing the amount of people who were very excited to participate was really motivating for all of us.”
The high volume of submissions also posed a challenge — deciding what to include in the limited amount of space available.
To help divide up the work of reviewing all the pieces, Murphy’s students formed into editorial groups to make decisions about which pieces to select for publication as well as provide notes to their authors on any edits that were necessary before publication.
Charles herself submitted four poems for consideration, three touching on the theme of mental well-being and a fourth with a horror theme. Between her experience working on “Our Own Chaos” and working in the Writing Center, Charles said she’s become more introspective about her own writing process.
“Overall I learned to be a lot more forgiving of myself and realize that writing can be difficult at times for all of us,” Charles said. “Even people that love writing and write all the time sometimes hate it. We can all improve as writers and being involved in creating this journal has been a fun exploration of other people’s writing.”
Charles and her classmates also collaborated in creating the look and feel of the journal, with each student preparing an aesthetic board made up of images and text to help illustrate what they hoped the journal could be.
“We picked things from everyone's aesthetic boards to incorporate into the journal,” Murphy said. “One of the things that we incorporated, for example, is a section of blank pages where the readers can write their own story in the journal, so the journal itself is like a collaborative community.”
“Our Own Chaos” contains about 30 pieces, mostly poems and short stories, as well as a motivational piece that directly addresses readers. For those who couldn’t attend the launch party, Murphy has a limited number of copies of “Our Own Chaos” available upon request, and a copy has been added to the collection of Raymond Hall Library. And works from the journal are expected to be featured in poetry and short story contests being planned for spring quarter.
ABOVE: Student Haley Charles works on her writing during a fall quarter workshop to produce pieces for "Out of the Chaos." TOP: English Instructor Jennifer Murphy talks to a student during the writing workshop.
Over the course of the project, Murphy watched her students develop a feeling of empowerment.
“Clearly there are voices that are eager to be heard,” said Murphy, who’s already looking ahead to having students produce another literary journal next academic year. “My students really picked up on that and we all were very conscious that we wanted this journal to be a platform for all of these voices and a way to come together as a community.”
While Charles doesn’t plan to pursue writing or publishing as her primary career, she wants to always be writing something.
“This project has just been a really great starting point for hopefully writing for many years to come,” she said.
While she knows there will continue to be moments of challenge in her writing, being part of a community of writers that can provide inspiration makes going through that struggle all worthwhile.
“Overall this really helped me relearn how to love reading and writing,” Charles said. “Being taught by people who have such a deep love for reading other people's work, it's encouraged me to be more adventurous and look more local for writers to read and connect with."
Story and photos by Dustin Wunderlich, director of community relations.