Bethel student literary journal invites alumni submissions

Bethel College

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Bethel College's literary journal is back, with a new format and a broader scope. Bethel is located in North Newton, Kan.



Lines was Bethel's creative writing journal published in print format until 2005, when it was discontinued due to budgetary concerns. Two current students, Nicole Eitzen, junior from Xalapa, Mexico, and Anthony Gonzalez, senior from Newton, Kan., are the force behind BClines, the 2012 rebirth and revisioning of Lines in online format.


Nicole Eitzen is one of the Bethel College students behind the rebirth and revisioning of the former creative writing journal. Photo by Claire Unruh.

Lines featured mostly poetry, short stories and other creative writing and occasionally photos or other visual art (black and white only). But because BClines is online, it can more easily accept visual art and can reproduce it in color, as well as videos and other digital submissions. While Lines limited its authors to students, BClines accepts entries from Bethel faculty, staff and alumni as well.



Last school year, Gonzalez, a photographer for Bethel’s student newspaper, The Collegian, was taking photos in the Administration Building one evening after dark when he found copies of the last issue of Lines (from 2005) in a bookcase of old books.



He told Eitzen about this. Eventually, the two of them went to Ami Regier, professor of literary studies, who was the last editor of Lines.



"She suggested it should be an internship," Eitzen says. "One reason it hadn’t worked [as well] in the past was that she had to do all the editing."



Making BClines into an internship means Eitzen and Gonzalez get credit for their work on the journal. It also helps them meet Bethel's Common Ground (general education) requirement of a practical application piece for all majors.



Eitzen and Gonzalez's interest in restarting the literary journal stemmed from a perception that "creative writing on campus hasn't really been explored [in recent years]," Eitzen says. "There are a lot of people who write poetry on the side but there wasn't a place to express it [publicly]."

She became especially aware of this, she says, because of the Martin Luther King Jr. Day poetry contest that started in 2011. She says she was surprised at the number of entries.


 
Members of one of Ami Regier's literary studies classes, clockwise from bottom left, Anthony Gonzalez, Nicole Eitzen, Jenae Janzen and Cody Claassen, consider the material the old-fashioned way, by reading it from books and photocopies. Photo by Claire Unruh.

"We first wanted to restart as another print journal," Gonzalez says. However, though Bethel’s Department of Literary Studies has been able to provide BClines with a small budget, it wasn’t nearly enough to cover printing costs.



More discussion with Ami Regier and Nathan Bartel, assistant professor of literary studies, convinced the students to go with an online journal—to expand media possibilities as well as open the call for submissions to a potentially wider pool.



"We're especially interested in making alumni aware of BClines and letting them know they can submit things to it," Eitzen says.

Faculty and staff submissions are welcome, too.



By the end of the 2011-12 school year, BClines had received around 40 submissions from 26 people (mostly students, although there were two submissions from faculty and one from community/alumni as well) in six different categories: digital media; drawings, painting and prints; fiction; personal essays; photography and poetry.

Web stats show there has been 6,000 views from 16 different countries.



BClines sponsored a contest with $25 prizes for the best "late submission" (after May 11) and the most popular submission, based on web hits. Terra Scott, sophomore from Newton, won the former, with a poetry entry. Audra Miller, senior from Hesston, claimed the latter—her entries were in a variety of visual media.

The web address for BClines is bclines.bethelks.edu. BClines also has a Facebook page—which announced, as of July 23, video streaming capabilities with the posting of 2012 graduate Clair Unruh’s prizewinning contribution to last spring's Bubbert Awards for student films.



Student response to BClines has been generally positive.

"Other literary studies students have told us they’re glad there's a venue for publication," Eitzen says.



Gonzalez adds, "Most people didn't know there was a literary journal on campus. Many [others] thought it was just for creative writing."

That was part of the reason behind sponsoring the contest—to raise awareness and get more submissions, which the students hope additional publicity will do as well.



"There is a lot of space on the site," Eitzen says. "There are archives, and we have a 'copyright tool' [Copyscape] that will help us find out if there are illegal copies made of any submissions."

There might still be occasional print versions of BClines she adds—perhaps at the end of a school year or on request.