I discovered Calliope my freshman year. After I attended the first meeting, I was instantly enthralled and I knew that I wanted to be a part of creating the next issue in any way that I could. I participated as a fiction reader, which allowed me to read all of the fiction entries and score them. My own fiction piece, Coffee and Cake, was also published in this issue. The second year, I was the youngest member of the editorial staff, as I was a sophomore surrounded by seniors. I loved my position as visual arts editor because it allowed me to use my background in art to create the cover, which I used Photoshop and InDesign to create (Figures 1 and 2). This position also allowed me to assist in scoring and selecting the visual art featured in the issue. Additionally, my nonfiction piece, Blame, was featured in the issue.
Figure 1
Figure 2
The next year, I became the managing editor for issue 32. This position allowed me to have a big impact on the journal. In this position, I worked with the editors of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and visual arts to create updated scoring rubrics for each genre. I also worked with the visual arts team to create awareness of the issue through creating unique flyers (Figure 3) and a separate flyer to appeal to visual artists (Figure 4). I thought that including more visual art would make the issue unique and allow art students a place for their work to be published.
Unlike the issues before it, the call for submissions and awareness of the issue was achieved mainly through social media posts. By using social media, we received significantly more submissions than previous years.
Figure 3
Figure 4
I also oversaw the production of the journal by formatting all of the pages in InDesign, which entailed selecting a font, spacing, and organizing the pieces within the issue. I had to revise the formatting in order to suit the publisher's needs, but I learned how to interact with a professional publishing house and meet the needs of editors while not exceeding the budget. I was extremely proud of myself and all of the people who participated in the creation of the journal. However, due to COVID-19, I was unable to distribute the issues at a reading with all of the staff, writers, and faculty. To adapt to the extenuating circumstances, I collaborated with the WVU Library to create the first online version of the journal: https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/calliope/
