Kiyomi Kishaba
Opinion Editor
The editors of PLU’s literary magazine Saxifrage had all the dates lined up and ready for the 2020 edition. But of course, COVID-19 showed up and threw a shoe in it.
As one of the editors of Saxifrage for the last two years, I know firsthand how challenging publishing a publication can be. Especially when nobody actually pays attention. In the fall and spring, the editors wrangle English and Art students to submit their work, and then spend weeks discussing submissions and suggesting possible edits. Then, we settled into the Design Lab in the library to wrestle with Indesign for a month trying to create a publication using software we barely know how to use. So yeah, kind of a mess.
But this year it was going to be different. This year one of our editors, Natalia Giovengo, was as organized as organized can be. She had emails with important sentences in bold, and google calendar invitations for every single one of our meetings. The 2020 edition of Saxifrage was going to be printed in April. April! A month earlier than last year. But then COVID-19 happened, and our meetings turned into google hangouts, and we realized this year was going to be different, but not because of superior organizational skills.
We decided to have an online publication. No screaming at Indesign software or frustrating calls with the printer, just us and a WordPress website. We’ll be making history as the first editors to create an online Saxifrage publication, and we’ll save so many trees (#sustainability). And maybe people will actually read it, because it’s a lot easier to share links on social media than physical books. Also, people can’t leave their house, so what else are they going to do?
So here’s the plan: online release on May 22, with a social media release party to gain attention. We want everyone to follow @saxifrage_plu on Instagram, and for writers published on the website to share the pages with their work! Maybe we’ll even have a live stream of writers reading their poetry or prose. The potential is endless, and we haven’t even started the website yet!
Long story short, if you want to be a part of making history, follow Saxifrage on social media to stay up-to-date on our first ever online release. The publication proves how strong and talented creative minds are at PLU, and their art deserves to be read and seen.
