San Diego State’s Aztec Literary Review is a literary journal run by undergraduate English students that accepts poetry, short fiction and other pieces to be published on its website twice every year. From now until Dec. 20, the editors are accepting submissions to the fall edition.
The magazine, founded by members of the SDSU English Honor Society, is now run through the English Department. English students edit the magazine, but any SDSU student is allowed to submit his or her work.
The journal, currently working on its fifth volume, was founded in 2012. The current editor-in chief is English senior Isabella Dumon. She hopes to expand the journal and get more students to submit to the magazine.
To accomplish that goal she is having the editors do more than just select which submissions will go in the journal. She is having them help with publicity and produce more content. English and Chicano studies senior Rafael Barón, an editor of the journal, described some of the editor-produced content that will go on the website.
“I’ll be doing interviews with previous writers who have been published,” Barón said. “Then, we’re going to be writing columns. All the editors will be writing columns on a book that they read.”
English third-year Emily Pooley is another editor who wanted to write a review for the magazine.
“I’m going to write and talk about known, published pieces,” Pooley said. “I could do something by a student, but I’m going to write on something different I really connected with.”
The three editors also explained what they liked about working on the journal.
“I like that anyone can submit to it,” Pooley said. “Since I have read the past issues, there are people that I am in classes with that have written for it. I think it is interesting that I have read stuff by them, and that as a result I get to know more about them.”
Barón noted that for him, it is simply fun to read and write. For any aspiring writers, this is an especially good opportunity to get one’s name out. For Dumon, an aspiring editor, she said this is a good way to pursue her line of work.
The most important part of all this work, however, is the writing. For some of the editors, it’s a chance to deal in the world of literature without having to publish his or her own work. Barón, though, has had his poetry published in the spring 2014 edition.
For everyone associated with it, the journal is a chance to deal in beautiful words.
