Getting involved in a campus group can feel overwhelming if you don’t know much about it. Through this interview with Grace Holland, Co-Editor-in-Chief of Jabberwocky, I hope you come to learn more about what students in the English Department can accomplish and gain an understanding of the ins and outs of our university’s student-run literary journal. You can find staff applications and submission information linked at the end of the interview.
Can you tell me about yourself?
I’m a junior studying English here at UMass. I’m also pursuing a Concentration in Creative Writing, specializations in Teaching the English Language Arts (TELA) and Writing, Rhetoric, & Literacy Studies (WRLS), and a minor in sociology. And I tutor in the UMass Writing Center, so as you can tell, I surround myself with writing.
What brought you to Jabberwocky?
After working on the school newspaper in high school, I knew I was interested in editing and publishing, but I wanted to go in a more literary direction in college. My sister was on the fiction team of Kalliope at Penn State and also had a few photographs published. That was my first exposure to undergraduate literary magazines, and I knew that I wanted to work on something similar at UMass.
How did you first learn about Jabberwocky?
Before I even applied to UMass, I looked up “UMass literary magazine,” and I found the Jabberwocky website. Once I started my freshman year, I noticed the staff application section, and I contacted the Jabberwocky email to see when I could apply.
What was your first Jabberwocky staff role?
I was a fiction editor for the 2023 edition, which meant that I participated in the selection process of our short story publications. During the spring semester, each team member read the fiction submissions from that week, and then we would all discuss our thoughts at the weekly meetings. We narrowed down the submissions from over 60 pieces to 5. I was also a copyeditor, so once all of the teams finalized their decisions, I got a couple of poems and a nonfiction piece to look over before they were put into the journal.
Are there ways in which your experience as a Jabberwocky staff member has changed your own writing process?
Exposure to a bunch of student writing, and hearing my team members’ reactions to it, was really helpful. I got a sense of what people liked and disliked about pieces, what gets selected by a literary journal and why. I wasn’t really much of a creative writer before I joined this journal, and it helped to spark that interest. I gained some confidence, too, because I had a short story in the final six. While it didn’t get selected, it got much further than I would’ve anticipated, and it gave me the encouragement I needed to keep going.
Editor’s note: staff members are allowed to submit pieces, but they have to remain anonymous during the selection process. All pieces are reviewed anonymously.
How have you grown into your current role on the team as the journal’s Co-Editor-In-Chief?
Photo Credit: Ev Fuss
As much as I loved being a fiction editor, I knew that I eventually wanted to become even more involved in every step of the process. So, the summer before sophomore year, I was interviewed and selected for the role of Associate Editor. Planning the launch party was an especially exciting part of my role, and I was happy with the outcome — we set up a table with the printed copies of the journal, and lots of our published writers/artists spoke about or read from their work. I also took attendance at meetings, and stepped in wherever else I could. The Editor-in-Chief, Chris, the Managing Editor, Mary El, and I basically split up the work as needed.
Since Chris graduated last spring, Mary El and I decided to work as Co-Editors-in-Chief this year, with approval from the English Department. We worked really well together and had a good idea of how to split up our responsibilities, so this structure of the Admin Team just made sense for us. We interviewed and selected our Associate Editor, River, who had been the Head Editor of the Nonfiction Team for two years.
What are the roles and responsibilities of different members of the team?
There are three admin team members — usually an Editor-in-Chief, a Managing Editor, and an Associate Editor. These three roles have distinct responsibilities — such as sorting submissions as the Managing Editor and planning the launch party as the Associate Editor — but overall, they just work together to run the show.
And then we have our genre groups: fiction, non-fiction, media, and poetry. These are the teams that go through the submissions and select which ones to publish. There’s a Head Editor and Assistant Head Editor of each genre team.
We also have our social media team, which helps us out with promotion, and our copyediting team, which makes any necessary corrections to the final pieces before publication. And of course, we have our Design and Layout team, including a Head Designer and Assistant Head Designer. They use their InDesign skills to put together the final product, designing the journal itself.
Can anyone join the team or is it exclusive to English majors?
Any undergraduate UMass student, of any major, can join! Though we are the undergraduate literary journal of the English Department, students from a variety of academic backgrounds join our staff.
What types of writing or visual works can people submit?
Students can submit nonfiction essays (academic, personal, criticism, etc.), short stories, poetry, and art (including photos of paintings/drawings/sculptures, digital art, collages, photography, etc.). All undergraduate students, of all majors, are encouraged to submit! We publish the work of students from a variety of majors.
Our submission deadline is on March 7th, 2024, and students can expect to hear back about their submission status in April. Non-staff members can submit up to 3 nonfiction pieces, 3 fiction pieces, 6 poems, and an unlimited number of media pieces. Staff can submit 1 nonfiction piece, 1 fiction piece, 3 poems, and an unlimited number of media pieces. The reason we have the staff limit is to address possible bias (although pieces are all reviewed anonymously) and to ensure that we have a fair ratio of staff to non-staff pieces.
What do you hope people get out of the Jabberwocky journal for readers and team members?
I had a friend tell me that last year’s launch party made him want to write — that’s exactly what I want the publication of this journal to do. Whether it’s joining a team like ours or submitting your own work, my hope is that Jabberwocky inspires people to somehow get involved in the literary community. And I may be biased, but I think that our staff meetings are fun — you get to talk about your interests with people that share them. And I think that undergraduate literary journals are so important because they celebrate the talent and creativity that exists on our campuses.
How to get involved with Jabberwocky
If you're interested in working with a welcoming team interested in creative writing, publishing, editing, and graphic media, please apply to join the Jabberwocky team by November 8th, 2024.
If you want the chance to see your work published in Jabberwocky, please submit your piece(s) for consideration by March 7th, 2025.
Learn more about applying and submitting to Jabberwocky.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length and was conducted over email.
Written by Katy Schlaefer, Digital Communication Intern.