Launch Party for UTC English Grad Program’s New Southern-Inspired Magazine: CATALPA

Catalpa, a magazine of Southern perspectives, will release its first issue this April. This new publication thrives on the unique, unorthodox, and creative stories inspired by the South. Catalpa solicits submissions related to, or written in the South. At Catalpa we want to inspire, entertain, and evoke thought.

Please support Catalpa’s release by attending our Catalpa Magazine Launch Party on April 28th at 6:00 p.m. in the Southern Writers Room in UTC’s library. We will be reading a few stories from our first issues and will have free food and drinks available. This is a project that all Catalpa staff members have worked extremely hard on, and would love to share with the UTC community.

To give you a little history of Catalpa, the magazine was created and is run by UTC English graduate students, under the watchful eye of our Director of Graduate Studies, Dr. Rebecca Jones. Catalpa has been developed to be the product of an annual publication course, Writing for Publication: A Graduate Magazine. The magazine provides hands-on, true to life, real-world application of skills that are necessary of personal, public, and professional writers. From the message we want to put out, to writing and editing, to and deciding on design elements such as colors, fonts and page-layout, we created Catalpa from scratch. Student write, edit, and design the whole magazine. We hope this becomes a staple of the English Graduate Program. 

Catalpa, ultimately, is the result of English grad students’ group effort. Learning to work in a team, problem-solving, taking initiative, strategic planning, adaptability are just a few of the skills we’ve developed in addition to writing for a particular rhetorical situation. Students have specific duties and tasks and are required to finish them on time. If not, you could throw off the timing of the release, and that really is not an option. It’s refreshing to be in a class that is all about collaboration.

We hope our issue is the first of many and that you will enjoy it.

Your support for Catalpa will be greatly appreciated, and we hope to see you in the Southern Writers Room at 6:00 p.m. on the 28th of April.

—Team Catalpa