Cassidy Hilburn
hilburnc@grinnell.edu
Arguably one of the more under appreciated student publication groups on campus, Press is a completely student-run publishing organization, bringing a number of students’ creative work to the page and to the public every semester. This semester they have selected two photography projects and one work of poetry to publish.
Sarah Arena ’16, is working with Press to create postcards from photographs she took while in India. Michaela Gelnarova ’18 will be developing her photograhpy into a 12-month calendar.
“Her photographs are visually stunning and aesthetically pleasing,” said co-media head Abdiel Lopez ’18, “and Press is looking forward to seeing this project come to fruition!”
This semester’s only written piece is a poetry project by Clara Trippe ’18. Her writing, described as vivid and descriptive, is going to be published in a book format and will visually focus on themes of blue and bodies of water.
Press takes on about three to four projects per semester and give away the printed projects at the end of the semester.
“[We’re] a student-run group that helps other students with any artistic pieces they have created,” said Press senior editor Tela Ebersole ’16. “Ehether that’s writing, poetry, photography, art, whatever, and help them go through the creative process that takes it from an idea in a word document to being printed.”
Press works with authors to turn their raw creativity into a professional, compact project. They provide funding in conjunction with SPARC (the Student Publication and Radio Committee), walk artists through the layout process and help edit.
“It’s about the finished product, but we focus a lot on the process,” Lopez said. “We want to make sure that everyone is involved, and that everyone gets a sense of what real publishing looks like.”
The face of Press changes every few years and new media heads have the ability to take the group in new directions. The previous media heads graduated this past spring and Donna Brunnquell ’17 and Lopez took on the positions for this year.
“It was hard,” Lopez said, “but Tela helped us through this, and … we’re still in contact with last year’s [media heads] via Facebook.”
Though Press prints art projects, the demographics of the group are academically diverse. While the majority of the team are humanities majors, Brunnquell is an art history, math double major and Ebersole is a general science, biology major.
“There’s no real benefit to my writing for my major to be involved in Press. But I enjoy it,” Ebersole said. “I’ve always been really interested in editing and writing, and while it’s not something I’m going to go into at all, it’s something really different.”
Involvement in Press isn’t just limited to an editor’s position or author submissions. Lopez described the organization as “the process of running a marathon, together,” and new members are always welcome.
— Abdiel Lopez ’18 is the Graphics Editor at The Scarlet & Black.
