Read poetry from the following students:
Magazine
Summer/Fall 2002
Wabash Review Goes
National
Writing at Wabash is clearly on the rise.
On the heels of last year’s Indiana Collegiate Journalism Awards for
The Bachelor, the College’s Wabash Review published its first volume
of the best of undergraduate fiction, poetry, interviews, photography and
creative non-fiction submitted not only from Wabash, but also from other
campuses, as well.
The resulting 200-page publication, funded by the English Department with
support from the Student Senate and student activities fees, is the most
impressive collection of student creative writing published at Wabash to
date. The addition of other undergraduate writers not only enhanced the
quality of writing submitted by Wabash students, but also enchances the
reputation of the Wabash writing program at colleges across the country.
“I had known that our advisors were enthused about making the Wabash
Review a stellar publication, and I think we were all pretty excited to
be working on it this year,” says Review editor-in-chief Dave O’Neill
’02. “I’d been in regular correspondence with our advisor
Professor Castro about improvements we could make—adding interviews
with nationally-known writers, which we added this issue, and other improvements
which I hope will follow. And a lot of us wanted to make it an undergraduate
review.”
“With all that momentum, I felt compelled to produce an excellent publication,”
O’Neill says. “Partly because I think if we’re going to do
something like this at Wabash, we should be doing it right. But also because
students really like literary reviews and this is one they’ll pick
up and read.. The copies I dropped off at the library disappeared like hotcakes.
O’Neill has a hard time narrowing down his favorites from the book.
“I could say something good about practically every piece in here,”
he says. He points to the first and last fiction entries as indicators of
the quality here.
“The first piece by Marc Sheffler is a simple but very cleanly written
story that opens the book,” O’Neill says. “Akrasia”
by Adam Baylor, who won this year’s Senior
Writing Award, is the most unique piece in the book, written entirely in
the second-person with a repeating pattern throughout—a five word sentence,
then a seven word sentence—that you don’t notice unless you’re
watching for it. It really develops an interesting rhythm.”
Besides being distributed on the Wabash campus, the Review was sent to contributors
and their college’s libraries. It even showed up on the Sweetbriar
College website, where on of its writers was featured.
“I think we’ve built a template for an excellent publication next
year,” O’Neill says. “I’m looking forward to see how
next year’s editors can improve on our book.”
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