Students, Faculty Celebrate the Release of 'Collective, Issue 10'
A sense of accomplishment filled the room last Wednesday as English students and faculty celebrated the release of Collective: The QCC Student Literary Journal, Issue 10 at a launch event.
However, as Associate Professor Benjamin Miller will tell you, getting to this point was not easy.
Since spring ‘16, Collective – a literary journal featuring student poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and even art – was largely the product of the efforts of the Creative Writing Club co-advisors Alison Cimino (originally, Jed Shahar) and Miller himself.
A campus-wide affair, production would begin with the co-advisors issuing a call for submissions in the spring semester, even enlisting other professors to help spread the word. They would then hold writing workshops for students who responded, assisting them in drafting and submitting their pieces.
And once everything was in order, a draft would be sent to Marketing, before Tim Hillis in Publications would design the book, compile a PDF, and send the final product to Richard D’Amato in Printing Services.
According to Miller, however, there was just one problem with this process: it was wildly inconsistent.
Even if there were enough active and dedicated club members in a given semester, there were still times when not enough students would come forward to help in the production process.
“Because clubs are reinvented every semester and are outside the curriculum, student involvement can be inconsistent,” Miller noted. “Often the responsibility to produce the book would fall on us professors, even if some club members could help in organizing and recruiting students to submit. This is not ideal and unsustainable.”
To solve this problem, the English Department devised a solution: a new course.
Described by Miller as an “internship-type” class, ENGL-233: Editing and Publishing a Literary Journal, is a new course that ran for the first time in the fall '24 semester with two primary goals:
- Publishing processes and publishing Collective, specifically
- Writing and editing creative writing genres: poetry, fiction, nonfiction
In short, the students of ENGL-233 took ownership of the journal’s design and production.
“...Deciding on a name (they chose to keep the old name, Collective), drafting and promoting the call for submissions, reading submissions, soliciting artwork, making selections, organizing the book, copy editing, designing the cover and back cover, and communicating with Printing Services.”
And the results of the students taking ownership were on display as 15 students (and one alumna) proudly read their work in front of a small audience in the Humanities Building, Room H-114.
From poetry to short stories, some light-hearted, while others deeply meaningful, the range of written pieces in Collective were just as diverse as those who wrote them. Sitting in that room, it was easy for anyone to understand that even though they came from different walks of life, the students shared one thing in common: a passion for poetry and creative writing.
Actually, there is another thing they had in common: gratitude towards ENGL-233 for providing them the opportunity to turn those passions into something tangible.
“One of my favorite parts of taking this class...I always said that I’m a lone wolf and that I like to work alone but the class required me to work with other people and it's amazing [to hear] what other young writers have to say,” said poetry editor Sha Akhmatova before reading her poem, “Coffee Shop.”
“I had a great time in this class and a lot of us didn’t even have a lot of experience in publishing or design or even writing, so Professor Miller did a great job guiding us through the whole process and putting this book together,” added sophomore and designer Amelia Bacchus.
And that is exactly what Miller was hoping his students, as well as prospective ones when ENGL-233 is offered again in the fall, would get out of the course.
“ENGL-233: Editing and Publishing a Literary Journal is a great class. You will learn what a literary journal is and why it's important. You'll get hands on experience with publishing, and you'll learn how to problem solve as a group. You'll learn about writing and editing poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.”
In the meantime, you can get a physical copy of Collective, Issue 10 by emailing Ben Miller (bmiller@qcc.cuny.edu). Additional copies will also be available in the library and English Department Office in H-428. There are no plans to release a digital version, but Miller noted he hopes that will change with the release of Vol. 11.
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