Artemis offers students a taste of publication
Harrison Scott Key, Ph.D., chair of the Liberal Arts department, opens the reading by presenting the winners for the Liberal Arts First-year Writing Prizes.
Photos by Diana Vega Vega
On Thursday afternoon, undergraduate writers gathered in the Student Center to read their work published in this year’s Artemis. Following a short reception, featured writers read their poetry, essays, short stories and nonfiction pieces to an audience of faculty and fellow students.
Artemis, SCAD’s literary journal, is a yearly publication featuring student work. Many pieces published there were written in SCAD writing workshops. George Williams, professor of creative writing and English composition, was the one who first pushed for Artemis’ creation.
“It was about 10 years ago that I realized we had these writing workshops and we didn’t have any format or medium or place where they could see their work published,” said Williams. He took the idea to the admissions department and within a year the first Artemis was published. The journal has put out new editions every year since.
Thursday’s event started with the announcement of the winners of the First-year Writing Prize, a competition open to students taking ENGL 123 Composition. Typically there are two categories: research essays and narrative essays. This year, the winners—Brent Kennedy and Cecilia Langley—engaged in a debate tackling the same prompt: “Men are funnier than women.”
Harrison Scott Key, chair of Liberal Arts and professor of the English Composition class the winners’ essays came from, announced the winners. He also explained the intent of this special prize.
“We created it in 2011 or 2012 just to recognize great writing that’s coming out of that basic English 123 class that most students have to take,” Key said. “We just want to pick the best of the best because we want prospective students to see what a great essay looks like, so they sort of know what they’re getting into when they come to SCAD.”
The following readings varied widely in type and followed no particular theme. There were poems about nostalgia, identity, life and death, fathers and sons, technology and relationships, and grief. Three students read excerpts from short fictional stories, two from memoirs and one from his personality profile of movie producer Alison Owen.
The audience follows along with the reading in their free copies of the literary journal.
Amanda Depperschmidt, a third-year writing major from Atlanta, got her work published for the first time in Artemis this year. She read from “Raison D’Etre,” a piece she wrote in her nonfiction class.
“It’s a personal essay, so it involves some anecdotes from my life and just how people find meaning and how it’s not necessarily inherent,” said Depperschmidt. “We have to search for it.”
Alex Cheves, a fourth-year writing major from Union Point, Georgia, had four pieces published in this edition. He read three—two poems and an excerpt from a fictional short story. The poems, which were the last readings of the evening, were about adoption. Cheves himself is adopted.
“This is the hardest poem I’ve ever had to write,” Cheves said. He took a couple deep breaths, then launched into a powerful reading of his piece “Birth Mother.”
According to Key and Williams, Artemis offers a valuable opportunity for students to get published before graduation. Not only does it provide clips for their resumes, it gives them experience in the publication business.
“What’s so great about Artemis is the submission and editing process is just like it is for a literary journal somewhere else,” said Key. “So students understand how to submit work, they understand how to edit work, they understand how to work with editors, which is all part of preparing students for writing careers. So it’s a great sort of rehearsal for what submitting to magazines looks like when they graduate from SCAD.”
Not to mention getting your work published just feels good.
“It’s a thrill to see your work in print,” Williams said. “I hope that will encourage them.”
