{"id":217,"date":"2020-04-30T02:35:24","date_gmt":"2020-04-29T18:35:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/?p=217"},"modified":"2021-06-17T17:57:08","modified_gmt":"2021-06-17T21:57:08","slug":"welter-on-quarantine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/2020\/04\/30\/welter-on-quarantine\/","title":{"rendered":"Welter on Quarantine"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cAre you identifying any themes?\u201d I asked the Welter<\/em> fiction-editing team about our accepted submissions.<\/p>\n

\u201cOther than food?\u201d asked Allyson Waldon, fiction editor and MFA student majoring in fiction writing. \u201cWe\u2019ve got stories called \u2018Radishes,\u2019 \u2018Zucchini,\u2019 \u2018Apples,\u2019 and \u2018Lemonader.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re making me hungry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRight?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

I checked with the remaining genre crews (poetry and creative nonfiction) who\u2019d set up shop at other corners of our large classroom, but our magnificent written content wasn\u2019t suggesting a unified theme. No bother. A journal edition doesn\u2019t have to present an organizing concept beyond excellence to strike a chord. After working strategically to spread the word about Welter\u2019s<\/em> 55th<\/sup>-anniversary volume, we\u2019d received many more good entries and images than we could publish.<\/p>\n

A couple of weeks later, the global pandemic gave us a theme for our daily lives: isolation. No more festive, nighttime classroom work sessions for us\u2014we\u2019d have to make all final changes, including proofreading, by Zoom, email, and the occasional phone call. While this was a letdown to me, the classroom advisor, I felt quite lucky we\u2019d already had the time to solicit and select stories, poems, essays, and artwork we could all agree upon.<\/p>\n

Like many of the best literary journals out there, Welter<\/em> is produced on a university campus. The twist with this magazine\u2014founded in 1965\u2014is that, each school year, a new University of Baltimore editorial team, earning course credit, edits and lays out the new pages. In recent years, grad students in the MFA in Creative Writing and Publishing Arts, which I direct, have produced this celebrated pub. This Spring, grads are working alongside undergrads to create a 22-member supergroup.<\/p>\n

I learn so much working with my students in this editorial office setting, but I also enjoy their fresh energy. I look forward to being around them. It\u2019s a beautiful thing to see everyone claim their new roles as art directors, poetry editors, and so forth, to see them make difficult creative decisions and beam when the finished book arrives from Spencer Printing. Once we all made the switch from in-person conversations to abbreviated Zoom dialogue, our work continued to go well, even though I felt sorry to see my class less often, to see them shrunk down to the size of a coaster or postage stamp, depending upon whether I\u2019d accessed my laptop or phone screen, respectively.<\/p>\n

For this blog entry, I asked my students what the remote journal production has been like for them. (Was I hoping they\u2019d say they missed me? No comment.)<\/p>\n

\u201cWorking on Welter <\/em>during quarantine has me thankful that we moved so quickly when we were meeting as a group,\u201d said Emely Rodriguez, poetry editor and MFA candidate in poetry. \u201cNow it feels like it\u2019s a strictly online magazine or something, though it\u2019s much more.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWorking on a lit journal during quarantine makes me appreciate the days when we were able to go on campus,\u201d noted undergrad Carleen Mcleod, who assisted both the nonfiction editors and the visual arts crew. (Thanks, Carleen\u2014I, too, miss our campus meetings.)<\/p>\n

Then MFA student Rasha Alkhateeb\u2014a poet who serves as co-art director alongside memoirist and MFA student Ana Preger Hart\u2014 reminded me that the whole point of a journal is to connect outside the classroom and around the globe. We can connect, truly, from our desks, when we concentrate\u2014and when our internet connectivity is tight.<\/p>\n

“As students, it\u2019s easy to stay within UB’s creative frame, but Welter<\/em> gave us the opportunity to meet creatives outside of the UB community, Baltimore, and the United States,\u201d Alkhateeb said. \u201cThrough Welter\u2019s<\/em> call for submissions, we interacted with contributors from all around the world, widening our creative lenses in the process.\u201d<\/p>\n

One obstacle: Our poetry category received far and away the most submissions. The editors had to play catch-up on finalizing their acceptances even after quarantine hit.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnxiety of unstable internet connections has led to less procrastination of major and minor tasks,\u201d said Tim Huber, an undergrad and assistant editor in poetry. \u201cThe poetry group was forced to adapt and utilize taken-for-granted technology and push it to its limits, performing nearly all of the evaluation and editing entirely online.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stevie Sanchez, an undergraduate and assistant editor in poetry, found that working remotely has ultimately given her a clearer voice.<\/p>\n

\u201cWorking on a lit journal during quarantine stretched my abilities in communication. Being understood with the varying levels of engagement that one can achieve outside of a classroom was a lesson we all learned,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

While I didn\u2019t get any sorrowful replies from students desperate to hang out and drink coffee with me, I am pleased that everyone was able to rise to this work-at-home occasion.<\/p>\n

\u201cWorking on a literary journal in the midst of quarantine is, a bit surprisingly, not all that different from working on a literary journal not<\/em> in quarantine,\u201d quipped Kim Uslin, nonfiction editor and MFA candidate in memoir.<\/p>\n

Chris Hart agreed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sure this opinion is shared by many, but I don’t find any important distinctions between working on the journal in-person vs. online\/isolated,\u201d said Hart, assistant poetry editor and MFA candidate in fiction. \u201cThe goal is the same\u2014and that’s the profound part: We\u2019re sending our voices, and the voices of people we may never meet, out into the unknown. We\u2019ve pieced together something that we believe is good and has merit\u2014and we’re hoping someone shares in that point of view. But, probably, we’ll never know. And in my experience, that\u2019s the way it is for every writer, every artist. Every one of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

As we moved from our in-person review, edit, and design process to something that was limited to virtual meetings and files traded over email, the essence of journal making was right there in front of us: Yes, share. Yes, decide what we like and don’t like. Yes, make the 2020 issue a great example of\u00a0Welter<\/em>‘s long and storied history. But, at its end, we see our work for what it is: Hey, we’re calling out from Baltimore. Anybody listening?\u201d<\/p>\n

You\u2019re listening, yes? Still stuck at home? I miss you\u2014did I type that? Comment below!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cAre you identifying any themes?\u201d I asked the Welter fiction-editing team about our accepted submissions. \u201cOther than food?\u201d asked Allyson Waldon, fiction editor and MFA student majoring in fiction writing. Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3453,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3453"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":510,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions\/510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}