Editor’s note: This story was written by Morgan Prokosch for COM 301 Advanced Newswriting.
Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota’s literary and arts magazine gives students of all ages and majors a chance to get their original works shared and published, said the magazine’s student editor.
Haley Williams, a senior literature with writing emphasis major, said that Mosaic is an annual magazine that consists of 50-60 pages of student-submitted art and writing. She said that the magazine generally looks for submissions of any types of visual arts, poetry, and short fiction to include in the magazine.
Williams said the exact composition of each year’s edition largely depends on the submissions that they get, but they usually try to pick works that go together in some way so the magazine has some sort of theme. Not every submission is published, but Williams said that they try to include as many people’s work as possible “to try to have the widest variety of representation on campus.”
Anyone is welcome to submit work to the magazine, Williams said. She said that students can submit any work that they do, whether it was done for class or just for fun. She said that the magazine especially likes when people submit personal work done outside of class because it provides more representation of the students on campus. “Those are the kinds of things we like to see because obviously that represents more than just the english or art majors… It shows how students from any major can do work like this,” she said.
The main goal of the magazine is to showcase students’ work, Williams said. “We want to show off the talent and the love of maybe art or stuff like that of students on campus, and just represent Saint Mary’s and the people that go here,” she said.
Mosaic also gives students a chance to be heard, especially the ones that feel as though they are underrepresented, Williams said. The magazine can give these students a chance to share their thoughts through their work, she said.
Mosaic can help students further their professional lives as well, Williams said. “Saying that you’ve been published is a big deal,” she said. She said that being published in any capacity is a good way for students to bulk up their resumes and look good to future employers.
Despite the opportunities the magazine presents, it takes some bravery to submit personal work and some people might be scared to do so, Williams said. “You just get to show off your work to the Saint Mary’s campus… A lot of people are scared to do that, but it shows that people that do it are kind of brave enough to want to put their work out there,” she said. She hopes that if students see their peers’ personal work published in the magazine, they might be encouraged to submit their own work as well in future years.
Physical copies of Mosaic will be given out at Celebration of Scholarship, where there will be a session in which students can come to get a copy of the magazine. Also during this session, Williams will talk about the process of creating the magazine and students that have work published will have a chance to talk about their work and share the context behind it.
The copies left over after Celebration of Scholarship will be put in the English department faculty office for students to take whenever they want. There is usually enough copies for all the students that submitted work to get one as well as everyone else that wants one as well, Williams said. “It’s student-based, so we want students to be able to have the magazines available, so we give out all the magazines we can to people,” she said.
In addition to the physical copies, Williams said that they have started the process of creating a digital version of the magazine, and they hope to have that ready for this year’s edition. She said that having online access to the magazine would make it more accessible and make it easier for students to share their published works with potential employers.
Mosaic is run through the English department, and most of the work done each year is done by a student editor who earns internship credit by overseeing the magazine. The student editor does many things, including creating posters and going to classrooms to ask for submissions, creating a student board to help pick out what goes in the magazine, choosing the cover art, formatting and designing the magazine, and sending it to the publisher. The supervisor for Mosaic is Erin Clark, assistant professor of English and world languages at Saint Mary’s.
Williams said that being the editor of Mosaic is giving her good experience that can help her in her future career. “I am hoping to work in publishing one day, and become a book editor, and so this is a good first step for learning how to kind of work in the publishing world, especially because it’s a lot more complicated than people realize,” she said.
If students are interested in getting their work published in this year’s edition of the magazine, they can email submissions to mosaic@smumn.edu. The deadline has been extended to next semester.