As the Mar. 5 deadline quickly approaches, members of Montage, the literary magazine at Quinnipiac, are encouraging students to submit their works.
The publication is exclusively composed of students’ pieces including, artwork, photographs, prose, poetry, short stories, and musical compositions, which are the newest additions to the magazine.
“The musical compositions are what makes our magazine different,” Suzanne Mahle, Montage’s editor-in-chief, said.
According to Mahle, a senior English major, who has been involved with the publication for three years, out of approximately 200 submissions, there were 31 chosen literary pieces for this year’s magazine, which comes out in April.
The selection process involves a committee. Each volunteer is given a packet to review during winter recess, filled with every literary submission. The pieces are entered into the packet anonymously. The works that earn the most votes from the committee are then chosen to receive further feedback from Professor Patricia Comitini, Montage’s faculty advisor. Ultimately, Mahle has the final say as to whether or not a piece will be included or not.
“I want everyone to be as much involved as they can be. We’re hoping for a bigger budget so that the book can be bigger,” Mahle said.
Because space is limited, each student can have no more than three pieces published in the magazine. However, members of the selection committee feel that it is often difficult to choose one piece over another.
“You would be surprised by the caliber of some of the submissions we receive. Therefore, we do try to choose what we feel are the best pieces to represent the best talent from the school,” Joyana Peters, Montage’s public relations manager, said. “I usually don’t say that a piece is good or bad; it’s more personal preference, and what I feel caught my attention. When rating work like that it’s a little hard not to be subjective to what I can relate to or what kind of written piece emotionally moves me,” she continued.
Montage began in the 1960’s with the intent of expanding the amount of student expression on campus.
“The magazine was originally brought about because people felt it was important for the college community to be aware of the creativity that exists on campus,” Mahle said.
To this day, the organization maintains the same goal of enabling students to openly share their imaginations and feelings with the rest of the Quinnipiac community.
“You can write about anything you want; creative writing is an outlet from a world where there’s constant rules and regulations,” Mahle said. “You can go out on a limb and that’s okay.”
For questions on submitting work contact Mahle at x8043 or email [email protected]
