(Corey Maher/Photo Editor)
MOLLY VANDENBERG
Staff Writer
Interested in reading work written by Fredonia’s own students? Look no further than The Trident.
The Trident is a campus-based literary magazine that comes out annually every Spring. It features original fiction, nonfiction and poetry.
The student editors of this publication are enrolled in ENGL 261, Introduction to Literary Publishing. The prime focus of the course is to produce the magazine for the campus and surrounding community.
“It’s a really cool and intimate project because we, as students, get to see other students’ work, but we also … are going to put it all together,” said senior English major Anthony Licata, who’s currently in the course.
This semester the course is being taught by visiting professors Josh Kalscheur and Eric Neuenfeldt.
Everything that comes out of The Trident is produced by the students themselves. The professors are there to offer their advice and guidance when needed.
“Every step from creating the language for a mission statement and a call for submissions, to the physical binding of the magazine to setting up and promoting the magazine with some launch events, all that’s going to be done within the context of the class,” said Kalscheur.
The class is also very discussion-based. Student-submissions were being accepted up until Feb. 13. In the classroom, students have been discussing received submissions and whether or not they want to publish them in The Trident. This process can be a little tricky but is very eye-opening.
“I think the biggest thing is not only do you learn how to work with people of different backgrounds and different intentions and different core values, but you also learn how to essentially be a leader as well. We get put into these groups where we’re pretty much left to run ourselves, so you do have differing opinions, and you have different ways of saying things, and you learn how to deal with these things and how to agree, as well as disagree with people,” said junior English, physics and cooperate engineering major Skye Mitchell. “You also learn to voice up for what you want to do. You never know, someone else might agree with you. I think that’s super important, not only in publishing, but in life in general.”
Having people read and discuss your creative work can be a little intimidating to some.
“It’s a huge responsibility on our part to kind of be curating people’s creative work … Once you’ve written something, it takes a lot of guts to then put yourself out there. We recognize that when we’re reading and evaluating work for whether or not we decide to accept it or decide to pass on it. Just because something doesn’t necessarily get into a magazine doesn’t mean that it’s not worthy. That’s not how we’re talking about the work,” said Kalscheur.
In the past, the class has been fairly small with about 16 students. This semester this class has 40 students involved, which creates a different kind of learning environment in which everyone wants to make sure their voice is still being heard.
“I think it’s a really important experience for all 40 of us in the class to be cohesive and to be self-governing … There’s a huge process that goes into this and to have us all working together to kind of figure out what fits and what works within our literary magazine is really great because it’s hard. It’s probably almost as hard as the actual writing and submitting itself because you have all these excellent choices to pick from and there’s so many great voices out there. It’s a lot of fun. It’s treasure hunting,” said Licata.
Kalscheur is enjoying his time teaching at Fredonia and has high hopes for this year’s Trident.
“The dynamic is great, I think. It’s a big class and we’re still trying to work on and improve our discourse, how we talk to each other. I like in some ways that’s been a little bit of a struggle. It parallels some of the ways an editing team has to figure out how to work with each other. So I think we’ve had some good breakthroughs as far as our discussions, and I think we’ll have more as we go forward. That’s writing, that’s editing. There’s going to be a lot of passion. We’re excited about that,” said Kalscheur.
Past editions of The Trident can be found in the English Department office in Fenton 277 and also on the first floor of the library.