Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, an absence of student involvement has taken a hit on WSU Vancouver’s campus, resulting in student organizations such as the university’s student-run literary arts journal, the Salmon Creek Journal, remaining nonoperational. However, two students are currently pursuing to revitalize the organization after its hiatus, hoping to create a 2022 journal by the time spring semester ends.
Created and published in 1997, the Salmon Creek Journal aspires “to push boundaries of what ‘art’ and ‘literature’ mean” as stated on their website. Intending to release one issue annually, each journal contains collections of poems, short stories, artwork and photography, mostly derived from students and edited by SCJ’s team. However, following their 23rd issue last year, the organization became inactive as most of its staff graduated from the university and left their positions unfilled.
“It came as a shock. We weren’t told that it was going to close. It was pretty devastating to see it just crumble all of a sudden… without much resolution. It was definitely a little bit jarring.” – Renee Hollopeter
This year, two students, Co-Editors-in-Chief Cassia Gehl and Hannah Burbach, formed their team in November, aiming to rebuild SCJ’s staff and produce its journal once again. According to Gehl, a senior and English major, and Burbach, a junior and humanities major, SCJ’s theme this year is “perseverance,’ a message that aligns with their goals of restoring the journal to its former success. With splitting the work in half, Burbach plans on doing the layout for SCJ, while Gehl works on editing and finalizing the literary pieces.
“This year [SCJ is] definitely [building] from the ground up. We’re a smaller team. It’s kind of funny because it goes with our theme. We’re trying to work through it, and in one way or another… we’ll figure it out,” Gehl said.
SCJ’s previous 2020-2021 staff was a team of talented and professional people, according to Renee Hollopeter, senior majoring in English and previous poetry editor at SCJ. When the journal became inactive following its 2021 issue, Hollopeter said she was surprised, but excited to see the journal active again.
“It came as a shock. We weren’t told that it was going to close. It was pretty devastating to see it just crumble all of a sudden… without much resolution. It was definitely a little bit jarring,” Hollopeter said. “I think it’s so cool. I was worried that it just wasn’t going to happen this year. So it’s exciting that even though it’s a little later in the season, it’s still getting up and running.”
According to Gehl and Burbach, the idea behind this year’s theme also centers around the continuity of nature and uncertainty of growth. Students can enter their work for publication by March 25 – SCJ will accept a range of submissions containing artistic expression and different literary mediums through poetry, illustrations, scripts, sculpture, music, short fiction and nonfiction.
For more information about submitting your work online, visit the link here.
“Submit your work. Even if you feel like it’s not going to get published, or it’s not good enough, submit it anyway,” Gehl said. “We have so many categories to choose from. It can be so simple, it doesn’t need to be anything big… we are really hoping to publish student submissions.”
Arabelle is a senior studying English at WSU Vancouver.
Is the Salmon Creek Journal looking for volunteers to help edit the contributions? I can’t find their website/contact info anywhere.
Submissions may be closed but you can email them at van.scj@wsu.edu to check and see!