In preparation for the annual release of Eastern’s newest edition of Inklings, our campus literary magazine, I sat down for a conversation with Inklings Editor-in-Chief, Danielle Curry. In it, we discussed the different kinds of work that can be submitted to Inklings, the process of picking which pieces will be included in each issue, who can submit to Inklings and how to submit.
But first, for the uninitiated, let me give you a brief introduction to Inklings. Inklings is a student-run literary magazine that publishes one new issue every school year that includes creative writing and visual art. Everything showcased in the magazine’s pages is student-made.
Inklings accepts virtually all genres of creative writing, including but not limited to poetry, short fiction and creative nonfiction. Inklings also accepts nearly any genre of visual art submission that can be reproduced in print. Previous issues have shown off lots of digital photography, but Inklings is interested in other kinds of art too, such as paintings, drawings, or even sculptures, if you can snag a good picture of them. There are a few more in-depth submission guidelines on the Inklings website, www.inklings.eastern.edu, but students are mostly free to submit whatever they want because in the words of Curry, what Inklings is looking for is really just “any story beautifully told.”
The freedom Inklings offers students to submit whatever they want is also reflected in the unique way Inklings picks the theme for each year’s issue. Most literary magazines pick a theme before they receive any submissions, and then they ask writers to only submit work that fits with that theme. Inklings, however, reverses this process, opting instead to let students submit whatever they want, and then Inklings finds the theme that organically emerges from these submissions. This process may sound difficult, but Curry makes it sound effortless, saying there are a lot of voices on this campus, and “sometimes what they say just floats into a theme.” Inklings finds this theme every year when the Editor-in-Chief and the Managing Editor read over all of the submissions and then ask themselves, “How can I make this a conversation?” Do you want to be part of the conversation? If you do, email inklings@eastern.edu and ask for the Google Form to submit your work. Any undergraduate student—even one who goes to another college—can send submissions, but the deadline is March 15, so you have to act fast!