The Shinnery Review will conduct a series of workshops Saturday afternoon to prepare students’ work for submission to the campus literary magazine.
The Crash Course will take place from 1-4 p.m. Saturday in the Learning Studio Core Classroom. Workshops will begin at the top of every hour, and food will be available.
Al Haley, associate professor of English, will lead the fiction workshop at 1 p.m.; Heidi Nobles, instructor of English will lead the non-fiction workshop at 2 p.m.; and Nil Santana, instructor of art and design, will lead the photography workshop at 3 p.m.
Juliana Kocsis, senior English major from Littleton, Colo., and editor of the Shinnery Review, organized the workshops to help students improve their submissions.
Students can expect to learn the basic pointers of how to improve their writing and photography. This crash course is meant to give students a basic understanding of how to begin or improve a piece for submission to the Shinnery.
“Each session is only 45 minutes long. It literally is a crash course. Instructors will offer pointers and tips to help make reasonable improvements to your writing,” Kocsis said. “In fiction writing, for example, he might talk about how to start a story, how to write a good first line or how to develop plot.”
Kocsis said ACU’s literary magazine is a quality magazine, making it a significant potential portfolio or resume feature for art or English students.
“We submit the magazine to several competitions each year,” Kocsis said. “Being published also looks great on job and graduate school applications.”
Many people don’t think they are up for submitting something, said Marshall Fox, senior English major from Waco. They either don’t have some of the key methods in approaching a story or the courage to sit down and actually put out a creative work.
“The three professors are some of the best in their fields,” said Fox. “They are very good at eliciting creativity from students. The Shinnery wants to encourage that.”
The Shinnery Review is released during the spring semester at an event called the Black Tulip. The published work is showcased and performed at the event.
“We want to promote creativity,” Kocsis said. “We want to promote the arts on campus.”
