“I love receiving emails from contributors who have been informed they were to be published,” said Kimberly Fangman, the editor of the student magazine “Illuminations,” which is released within the Southeast Community College. “Their excitement and pride is so vivid,” she added.
“Illuminations” is the literary and arts publication of SCC, featuring many genres: short stories, poems, essays, artworks, photographs, or anything creative.
Starting with the idea of Shane Zephier, an SCC student, to create a place for students’ creations, the magazine used to be almost all student- driven from composing and choosing the submissions to design and editing.
Along with positive responses of the SCC community and the development of “Illuminations,” the editorial team has expanded to include faculty and staff, as well as alumni of the publication.
The first volumes also came out from the SCC printshop, but the book is also no longer printed in-house.
According to Fangman, 85-90 percent of all published works are submitted by SCC students, most of whom are from the Academic Transfer program because of the number of essays turned out in literature and composition classes. Besides that, many photographs, artworks, and graphic designs are contributed by the Visual Publications students. Thus, students are still the driving force behind the publication.
“The magazine is richer because of the diversity of our contributors,” said Fangman. “Not only have we published submissions from students of varying cultures, nationalities and experiences, but we’ve published works from nearly every program in the college. I love the different voices that come from that.”
She added that “Illuminations” provides a place for creativity that doesn’t really exist elsewhere.
The book is available to everybody at all SCC campuses and satellite locations, providing students with the chance to publish their work, increase their confidence in their artistic abilities, and have a published piece to add to their resume or portfolio.
However, the budget of the publication, according to Fangman, is an issue.
Even though the contributors would like to publish two volumes a year, to avoid resorting to selling ads, which many literary magazine advisors have been forced to do, they chose to release it once a year. “It’s frustrating to tell a student who submits a work in June, for example, that she won’t know whether or not it will be published until the August of the next year,” Fangman said.
“Illuminations” was changed into a larger format and a full color interior in 2011.
The editorial team also started to receive submissions of multimedia entries (such as original music and film) from 2012 and opened a Facebook account, which is at www.facebook.com/illuminationsscc, to connect those interested in the publication.
Fangman, an English instructor at SCC, has been the editor of “Illuminations” since 2008, when she had already served as co-editor with the previous faculty advisor for a year.
She expressed her passion for the magazine, as she sees students, faculty and staff contribute work they love.
Besides financial difficulty, according to Fangman, heavy work is a problem. She solicits submissions and guides the creation of posters, ads and other promotional materials, guides the editorial team in their selection process, finalizes the selections and proofreads and edits all accepted submissions.
The limited personnel is another reason the magazine is unable to come out more than once a year.
“Producing the magazine is simply a great deal of work, but it’s work we love,” Fangman concluded.