St. Joe Literary Magazine: A tradition displaying talent

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Grace Bradley

A piece of artwork submitted by Grace Bradley ’22 titled “Grow Through What You Go Through”

Maggie Mays, Public Relations Editor

The Literary Magazine at SJA, Constantly Risking Absurdity, is student-run and published each year in the springtime. This magazine consists of 132 pages of student produced pieces including poems, essays, artwork, photographs and more.     

The Literary Magazine is moderated by Ms. Amy Summers, who is in the English Department and Computer Science chair. Ms. Summers moderates St. Joe TV as well as The Voice. She also teaches British Literature, Creative Composition, Journalism, and Video Production classes. 

The literary magazine is one of my favorite creative outlets at St. Joe. We have such talented writers and artists in our community, and I love that we have a forum to shine a spotlight on our creations. Our editorial staff works hard each year to produce it, and while it’s a bit different with COVID, we are happy to still be able to produce it albeit digitally to everyone at St. Joe,” Ms. Summers stated. 

Junior Grace Bradley, an avid lover of art, submitted some painting and collage work of hers. Her pieces included are titled “Camus On Death,” “In My Dreams,” “GTWYGT,” and “Women Unite!”According to Grace, her paintings are intuitive and are not pre-planned or thought out and are instead made as she goes. 

“I love the use of layers, colors, and patterns as well as different materials like acrylic paint and oil pastels but also magazine cutouts,” Grace said. 

Along with artwork, there are a multitude of student submissions of essays, short stories, creative writings, fictional pieces, poems, and about any other work of literature one could think of.

Junior Margaret Sommers expressed her love for poetry by submitting a poem to the Lit Mag she wrote in her freshman English class, World Literature, with Mr. Kohler. Mr. Kohler’s freshman English class completes an entire unit on poetry each year, and Margaret’s favorite piece of hers was titled “Rainy Day.”

“The poem isn’t about any day in particular. I was kind of picturing a busy city like New York when I wrote it. I wanted to submit it to the Lit Mag because it was one of my favorite poems I have written in high school thus far,” Margaret remarked.

The student-run Literary Magazine demonstrates a variety of talents possessed by students at St. Joe through an array of their creative writing and art pieces. The magazine serves as a reminder of the uniqueness each girl at our school brings to the table, and this individuality is expressed through their work.  Constantly Risking Absurdity can be viewed on the school website at https://www.sja1840.org/news-detail?pk=1176484.