Miscellany Goes National
Laura Rashley, Editor-in-Chief of Miscellany, reflects on the exciting new direction of our College’s undergraduate literary journal, now in its 36th year and now officially a national undergraduate literary journal. She writes:
Since its founding in 1980 by the poet Paul Allen and his student, John Aiello, Miscellany has gone through some dramatic changes. It wasn’t until 2014 that Miscellany became more present on the web, starting a blog and posting staff pieces regularly. In 2015, that blog was entirely redesigned, and now includes more content, both from our staff of volunteers and from our contributors. Also this year, we began a successful interview series with various poets and authors on our blog. We have Twitter and Facebook accounts, and the staff has begun the process of rebranding Miscellany as we step up our marketing game. Most significantly, Miscellany went national, accepting for the first time submissions from undergrads all over the country. Previously, Miscellany’s contributors were only College of Charleston students, so we made the decision to open up our submissions after we reformed our mission statement; we want to provide a competitive venue for emerging undergraduate writers, and we felt we couldn’t do that to the best of our abilities by limiting our contributors.
Since then, Miscellany has received almost triple the submissions than it has in previous years. We’ve reached students in so many other states—from California, to Florida, to Connecticut—and we have grown our own contributor base here in Charleston. We’re excited to debut our first issue as a national literary and art magazine for undergrads this spring, on April 15th at 5:00 p.m. in the Halsey Institute. The event will be free and open to the public, with food, beverages, and a brief reading from some of our contributors. This has been a record year for Miscellany, and we’re excited to see what the undergrads of our nation will produce next.
–Laura Rashley
