The students read the syllabus for our ENGL 283 Creative Writing class and naturally wondered what participation in creating an e-zine meant. One of them asked, "What the heck is a literary e-zine?"
To acquaint the students with the concept of an e-zine, I asked them to evaluate two literary e-zines. This evaluation was informal, meaning that I didn't grade the assignment for grammar and mechanics. I simply wanted them to examine some e-zines critically and to acquire an understanding of what a literary e-zine might be. I did provide the students with some loose guidelines for evaluating the e-zines, as well as a list of e-journals and e-zines. I warned them that there were some "literary landmines" in this list: not all of the journals were literary and some of them were not e-zines at all but merely advertisements for traditional print journals. Their evaluations eventually became part of the e-zine the class created.
To deepen our understanding of works published on the web--and how they might or might not be different from works published in print journals--two groups of students in the class led discussions on a couple of stories published in e-zines, stories they had chosen. Their informal summaries of the class discussions are also published in the class e-zine.
Throughout the semester, students worked on their writing, spending the first half of the semester on poetry and the second half on fiction. We conferenced and workshopped as usual. Students frequently showed me pieces of writing and asked, "Do you think this piece would be good for the e-zine?" Already, they had an increased awareness that their writing would do more than simply earn them grades.
One day, as a stress reliever of sorts, I gave the students the beginning and the ending of a Mark Twain story, "Ghost Story." I had deliberately chosen one of Twain's less famous stories, gambling that none of them would have read it. Working with partners, the students quickly wrote the "middle" of the story, So we came up with several different middle sections for Twain's story, some more successfully blending with Twain's text than others. This was highly experimental. If I were to do this assignment again, I might give the students more time to write and revise, to produce better writing. All in all, however, the results were interesting and sometimes hilarious. It helped the students to see how unique their voices are and to think about how plot takes shape in fiction.
In addition to working on their writing and the e-zine, the students also attended one literary event in the local community. They could write about the event, or, if it was a poetry reading, they could read their own poetry. Included in our class e-zine are students' evaluations of several local literary events , giving the e-zine a distinctly local flavor in spite of its worldwide Internet presence.
Late in the semester, students submitted what they felt were their three best works for consideration in the e-zine. Then, members of the class, working on committees, decided what poems and stories should be included, keeping in mind that every member of the class must have at least one work published in the e-zine. Other class members edited and proofread the works, frequently conferring with the writers. These committees in turn e-mailed the final edited selections to the committee that assembled the pages on the Web. This required teamwork, organization, and clear communication among the members of the various committees. The committees often met outside of class and communicated by e-mail as they worked together on the project.
The web-pages committee made critical decisions about how the magazine should be organized and what it should look like. To give the e-zine cohesion, each page would contain introductory text and images. Brent Smith, a student in the class, wrote most of this text and included scans of photographs that one of his friends had taken. He and Joel Ellis, another student, organized the various elements of our literary e-zine and designed the pages to have a consistent, uniform appearance. Joel worked especially hard at getting the cover page just right, knowing that this would be the first page everyone would see. And, finally, when the e-zine was nearly done, all of the other members of the class offered their final feedback. As I remember that day, it was a time of celebration, with the e-zine in the last stage, requiring only a little fine tuning.
Although I am not certain that the end of
this e-zine story is in sight, I can offer some resolution.
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