Posted November 11, 2015
The student magazine Prologue is making itself known this semester through hard work and patience, doing well despite the next semester having the toughest work to do.
Prologue is a student organization that compiles literature and art from current students and recent graduates into an annual journal. The next edition will be published during spring semester. But getting to Prologue’s 59th issue is going to take time and a great amount of effort.
Assistant Professor Joe Rein of the English Department has been the advisor to the magazine for more than four years now and has seen it evolve over time, though the one thing that doesn’t change is the skill that goes in.
“The basic skills that go into making a journal are publicity, amassing submissions, making criterion to decide who to put in and who not, and working together in editorial groups,” he said. “It includes all of those skills that are important skills to have that you don’t see when you hold the journal.”
Rein also said that there is a heavy emphasis on the design of the journal, using such editing programs as Adobe InDesign to create the look and feel of what is being put out.
Putting together the entire book is also going to take quite a lot of hours. Editor-in-Chief Eli Nord has been on Prologue since last year, and it has demanded much time from him.
“Spring semester we hit the ground running,” he said. “I think I spent probably upwards of 50 hours laying out Prologue last year and communicating with the printing company…it’s a lot of work. We do it for free, but we have to because we are invested.”
Nord said Prologue ordered about 700 copies last year, twice as much as normal, mainly due to downsizing the dimensions of the book and finding a different printer.
The staff will not start putting Prologue together until February, after submissions have been received.
This semester members of Prologue have been working hard to bolster support and interest in the magazine, and one way they have been doing this is through events. Editor Emily Black says that a literature reading was held recently and was well received.
“We are trying to build our presence in the fall, and we just had our student reading. I feel like it went well,” she said. “We keep track in our log and I think we had a hundred or so people turn up, so I think it was very successful.”
According to both editors, any student may submit their writing or art and have it possibly appear in the magazine, though each will have to be reviewed by a committee of students in the organization and weighed based on its literary and aesthetic content.
The submission dropbox will open as soon as the next semester begins and a lot of rigorous work will follow for the students at Prologue.
Until then, Prologue promises to continue putting out events and exhibitions.
“We’re all about getting students that haven’t had an opportunity to get published to get that chance,” Black said. “Everybody’s got a fair shot with Prologue.”
The article may be found online at https://uwrfjournalism.org/2015/11/prologue-uwrfs-literary-magazine-heads-toward-its-59th-issue/.