The Literary Magazine, “Expressions,” took on a new platform this year, as staff adjusted to changes due to COVID-19. Opting for a website as opposed to the usual magazine structure, this year’s theme was (dis)connected, with photographs and captions evoking the virtual, isolated spirit of quarantine.
Starting with a homepage with a foreword describing the sentiments regarding the upcoming works, the website breaks down the categories of the winning works into prose, interpretive, poetry and artwork. Viewers can find more specific types of writing within the different categories that separate the types of more general writing. Within these specific subjects, one can choose which winning piece to view, from first to third place. These works come from the Literary Fair and the Scholastic Keys.
A second semester class, the Literary Magazine class starts planning in September to get messages out to teachers. They also decide on the theme for the Literary Fair beforehand so students can submit the appropriate work.
Normally, the Literary Magazine staff does both a literary magazine and organizes the Literary Fair; however, they couldn’t do literary fair in person and couldn’t distribute magazines, so the staff combined all of the events to one website. Many accomodations were made to try to replicate the normal events as close as possible. For example, in the library, the writers normally talked about their works for the literary fair, so on the website, there is an interview section and videos of many of the authors reading their works.
Although this has presented some difficulties in this new design, the students have adjusted. “It’s been really weird not going to class and working with everyone like we usually do. But, under the circumstances I feel like we’ve done a great job to make things feel as normal as possible,” Assistant Editor-in-Chief sophomore Nithisha Makesh said. “We didn’t produce a magazine this year and instead made a website, but we dedicated the same amount of time and hard work. Everyone has done an incredible job and the website definitely reflects that.”
