Academic Department Welcomes Writers to Barton’s First Literary Magazine
December 15, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Story by: Linda Jerke
A ‘First’ for Barton’s 40th Anniversary
Barton Community College’s first literary magazine, Prairie Ink, will be published in the spring of Barton’s 40th anniversary year, Dean of Academics Dr. Rick Abel has announced. “The addition of a Barton literary magazine nicely expands our endeavors in the fine and performing arts,” Abel said.
Editors Jaime Oss and Teresa Johnson are excited to provide a venue for experienced writers and a voice for emerging writers. “I’m so glad to have moved to Great Bend where the arts are pursued in so many interesting ways by both the community and its college,” said Oss, who is in her first year as an instructor at Barton. “I’ve attended some really marvelous plays, concerts and art shows,” she added.
Johnson agrees. “We have outlets for music and art. Literature follows naturally from those activities,” she said.
“People are writing all the time – blogging, tweeting, e-mailing,” Oss pointed out.
“Now that people are used to having their work published on the Internet, they may be more willing to publish their more creative endeavors,” Johnson added. In fact, Abel said plans are to offer a print version of Prairie Ink first, then eventually publish the magazine online.
Editors Oss and Johnson welcome fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, drama, literary criticism and graphic narratives that can be reproduced in black and white photography. They invite entries from Barton students and all residents of the seven counties in Barton’s educational region: Barton, Pawnee, Rush, Russell, Rice, Stafford and Ellsworth counties, as well as Barton’s Fort Riley Campus and Grandview Plaza.
Originally from eastern Kansas, Oss is a graduate of Emporia State University with a bachelor’s degree in English education and a master’s in English literature. She has taught high school language arts, both American and British literature, and reading since 1984. In addition, she has been an instructor of college composition, introduction to literature, the short story, business communications, applied communications and basic composition, spelling and grammar since 1990.
Oss said she’s pleased to be part of the faculty at Barton and to contribute to the artistic life of the college and surrounding communities. In addition, she said she’s looking forward to meeting more community members in her new role as co-editor of Prairie Ink.
She is interested particularly in poetry, short stories and memoirs.
Johnson, a native of Great Bend and a 1990 Barton graduate, has worked for the college for 15 years. She earned a bachelor’s degree in education with an emphasis in English from Emporia State University in 1993, graduating Magna Cum Laude.
She has taught English composition and literature at Barton for the past six years. She also has worked in Barton’s Admissions Department and in the college’s Title III grant-funded program. While working at Barton, she earned a master’s degree in education administration from Fort Hays State University in 1999.
Johnson enjoys all types of literature in her free time, and she has dabbled in poetry and short fiction.
With similar literary interests, both instructors are eager to receive their first entries for Prairie Ink. “We’re including all of the creative work we are familiar with and we’re also accepting graphic narratives, which while not new, have not gained the attention and acceptance of more traditionally oriented instructors and editors,” Johnson said.
She explained that graphic narrative is a mixture of visual art and text. “You don’t get the meaning just from the text, but from both, so the writer gets two outlets,” she said.
The editors are asking that the writers submit their work electronically using the rules of manuscript format that can be found on the new Prairie Ink Web site, www.prairieink.bartonccc.edu/index.html .
Submissions may be e-mailed to prairieink@bartonccc.edu .Submissions must come with a cover letter that includes the author’s name, address, phone number, e-mail address, title of submission and a brief biography of the author.
All correspondence, including submissions of no more than 5,000 words, must be typed using a legible 12-point font, double-spaced with 1-inch top, bottom and side margins, and be printed on only one side of the paper. The first page of the manuscript must also contain the author’s name, address, phone number and e-mail address, and each page must be numbered.
The editors welcome multiple submissions throughout the reading period, but no previously published submissions. They reserve the right to distribute the opportunities for creative voice evenly in both the student and community populations. They also reserve the right to waive the submission requirements in certain populations of the student body and community.
Their reading period is under way now and will continue through Feb. 1, with the publication date set to be within the first week of May.
Barton Community College English instructors Teresa Johnson, left, and Jaime Oss discuss their plans as editors of Barton’s first literary magazine, Prairie Ink.
