By Vivian Dyer.
The creative writing team hosted their annual coffee house on Tuesday, April 30 at the Grace Museum celebrating the publication of this year’s Gallimaufry.
“I’m super proud of the way the journal came together,” senior editor Caleb Irwin said. “I was talking with Mr. McGee, and he made the point that a lot of high school journals aren’t able to put together something of this quality.”
The Gallimaufry is the school literary journal compiled of different student submissions such as short stories, poems and photography.
“I’m the editor-in-chief this year, so I’m one of the only people that gets to see who submits everything,” senior Jackson Riley said. “Seeing everybody’s submissions and seeing all the people who got to submit was nice.”
During the coffee house, creative writing teacher Mr. Pace spoke about the history of the journal and how far it has come since its first release in 2008.
“My favorite part of the coffee house is the history,” Irwin said. “I love hearing Mr. Pace speak about the history of the journal. It is so cool to see where we’ve come from, and that the journal is an old tradition that we are continuing.”
The journal has been successful in earning many awards and recognition throughout its publication years.
“Last year we were one of the top 30 journals in the nation so that’s pretty epic,” Irwin said.
The journal is put together by the creative writing class. They go through submissions and write their own stories for the journal.
“I’ve always liked poetry,” Irwin said. “I think creative writing was just a great opportunity to get better at it.”
According to senior Marly Gabriel, with the creation of the journal comes the difficulty of denying and critiquing stories to produce the best journal possible.
“The critiquing of the work is hard,” Gabriel said. “Having to decide whether something fits the theme of epilogues can be a little difficult especially if it’s super well written.”
The published copies of the journal are always an aspect of the class to be proud of according to Irwin.
“I love the cover of the journal, I think it’s so cool,” Irwin said. “It’s one of those things where I’m gonna look back on my shelf and think, ‘dang I helped create that’.”