Photo by: Kiwihug on Unsplash
From now until March 20, the Brock Creative Writing club will be accepting submissions — both writing and artwork — for a Brock student anthology.
The club’s co-presidents, second-year English concurrent education major Gabriel Piessens and second-year creative writing major Cameron Sauder, explained in a joint statement that this is a return to a tradition that the previous creative writing club had.
“Back in previous years, the anthology was a tradition for the club, even being published in the Brock library, which we hope to do this year,” they said.
This return to form is also the inspiration for the title of this anthology: Songs of the Phoenix.
“We picked the title to represent the return of the Brock Creative Writing Club, since it hasn’t existed through BUSU since 2018,” they said. “We felt that it was a fitting, poetic title that represented the re-creation of the community: ‘Songs’ for the writing pieces, and ‘Phoenix’ for our fiery, glorious return.”
The co-presidents said that they are open to a broad variety of submissions, only limiting in regards to length and sensibility.
“We have limited the submission lengths to five pages, in order to give an equal amount of space to everyone who wants to submit,” they said. “However, within those five pages, writers can enter any kind of writing, whether that is short story, poetry, etc. Students are allowed to submit multiple pieces, as long as the total length doesn’t exceed the limit. Writers are also free to explore any genre or topic, providing that their piece doesn’t promote bigotry.”
The co-presidents are working with Dr. Adam Dickinson from the English department to get the anthology published and they hope to have a copy available through the Brock library.
“We believe that there will be one physical copy available in the library, but the details of publication still have to be hammered out. Regardless, all contributors will get a free physical copy printed and bound through the Brock Printing Services.”
The pair also stated that their current goal is to have the anthology completed by the end of the term, depending on the printing process.
“Currently, we have a soft deadline of submissions for both writing and cover art on March 20th. After this, our executives as well as the president and vice-president of the other Brock Creative Writer’s Club on campus will do basic line edits, and make sure that no content promotes anything bigoted. After that process is complete, it will just be a matter of printing and publication, which we hope will take no longer than two weeks.”
Students interested in submitting work for the anthology are encouraged to visit the Creative Writing club’s ExperienceBU page and click the Google Form links regarding either art for the cover or writing for the book.