On Thursday, May 5th, Arrowhead High School’s annual literary magazine was made public online.  A digital copy of the magazine was published on Arrowhead’s website (accessible here), and physical copies should be available by sometime next week (week of May 16). 

Arrowhead students are encouraged by their English teachers and via flyers and announcements to submit their creative works to the Literary Magazine.  Submissions vary from poetry and short stories to photography.  This year, there were 20 poems, 17 short stories, and 31 photographs published.

The poets, authors, and photographers are not the only students who made this magazine.  Two Arrowhead juniors, Lauren Theiler and Kadin Saffert, worked as editors for this magazine, which entailed selecting which entries to include, designing the magazine, compiling it all together, and promoting it around the school.  This was both of their first year editing the magazine.

Elizabeth Jorgensen, a creative writing and journalism teacher at Arrowhead, is the faculty advisor of the Literary Magazine. She says, “I try to empower my student editors to curate the publication fully. The student editors put up flyers, soliciting submissions. They went through literally hundreds of submissions and made the decision of which to publish. They also selected student winners in each category. Although I was there as the advisor, this is truly a publication for and by Arrowhead’s students. Both of the editors this year did an amazing job. The publication is beautiful, polished and I’m so proud of the editors.”

The Literary Magazine was open to submissions (via email at [email protected]) from the start of the 2021-2022 school year through the last school day before spring break (March 18).  

Published students will be called down to the office to receive their physical copy, and other interested students should see Jorgensen in room N199 sometime before the end of the school year.  

Saffert says she and Theiler had originally submitted their own pieces but had to take them out due to a page limit.

Kadin and Theiler did not only have to cut their own pieces.  As editors, they had to decide which submissions would get to be published.  Many students submitted poems, stories, and photographs taken in classes such as creative writing, composition, and photography.  This resulted in some similar entries (from the same assignment), so not all could be included.  

Saffert estimates there were around “80-100 submissions per category.”  Around 80 students in total were published in the magazine.

Theiler says her favorite part of working on the magazine was designing it, and Saffert says that hers was that the creative pieces inspired her to write her own.

The Literary Magazine was submitted to NCTE’s REALM award (National Council of Teachers of English’s Recognizing Excellence in Art and Literary Magazines award).  In 2021, the NCTE called Arrowhead’s Literary Magazine “excellent.” 

The results of the 2021-2022 submission will be announced sometime in the Fall of 2022.