When I found out we were to go on “alternative delivery” this spring due to Covid-19, my first thought was, “But what about Lit Mag?” I had been trained to teach online classes at UW-Madison a few years ago, and I felt confident that I could create an alternative delivery for my comp students that would engage them, but teaching Literary Magazine online seemed like trying to teach a collaborative pottery class online—without the collaboration and without the clay. I asked advice from Dean Ed Janairo, from Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs Stephen Swallen, from longtime Lit Mag veterans John Markestad and Dan Emerson, and I finally came up with a plan: each student (or pairs of students, working together) would submit a page or spread to Canvas as a layout draft, which we would then discuss each week in class, and Dan, our designer, would put it all together.  

 

    This plan went both better and worse than I expected. The layout pages looked great, and students were able to feel a sense of ownership over the pages of poetry, fiction, and art that they had arranged together in a way that was cohesive both thematically and visually. All of the students worked on layout, making this a true group effort, which was wonderful.  

   

    But conversations that once took two minutes—“I don’t think that photo works with that poem. What do you think? Can someone find a different photo?”—now took a week to get resolved. The comradery built in my office, in which students worked together between classes, was missing. The days in which Dan was at mission control, and others popped in to ask, “What can I do?” to be told, “You can fix page 46,” or “You can help this editor work on the Table of Contents,” or “You make a coffee/snack/Culver’s run,” were gone.  

 

    And yet, we made it work. We got together for class on Zoom once a week. We celebrated each other’s accomplishments and empathized with each other’s struggles. Most important, we lovingly poured over the submitted literature and art, and tried our best to publish it in a way that was beautiful and respectful to the authors and artists who had entrusted it to us: as always.  

   

    Late in the semester, past our usual deadline, you sent us your visual and written stories of what it’s like to live during a pandemic, and so we created our first ever community cover and back cover, as well as a Coronavirus Stories spread. Literature, and therefore a literary magazine, has always been a record of what it’s like to be alive during any moment in time, and this edition is a prime example of that. We couldn’t have done it without you— our editors, our authors, our artists, our readers, our campus, our university, and our community.

 

Thank you all, Kelly Dwyer

 

With special thanks to Diana Blindert, John Christensen, Dan Emerson, Governor Evers, Dean Edward Janairo, Charles Johnson and the Boo-U Maintenance Staff, Dr. Katie Kalish, John Markestad, Mayor Mike Palm, Gabe Riviere, Jason Schulte, Dr. Marc Seals, the SGA of UWP-B/SC, Chancellor Shields, Beverly Simonds, Dr. Stephen Swallen, Errin Wellman, and the Humanities Department of UW-Platteville and the English Department of UW-Platteville Baraboo Sauk County