Literary Review Wins National Magazine Prize

The 2022 edition of the Lewis & Clark Literary Review, now called the Palatine Hill Review, won the Association of Writers & Writing Programs 2023 National Program Directors’ Prizes for Content and a $1,000 cash award. The edition also earned second place in the Prize for Design.

2022 bone meal coverThe 2023 award was selected by DeMisty D. Bellinger-Delfeld, an associate professor of English studies at Fitchburg State University, who applauded the edition’s “powerful poems and moving prose” and marveled that most of the content was written by undergraduate students.

The Review’s leadership team included Eve March BA ’22, Jillian Jackson BA ’23, AJ Di Nicola BA ’24, Elizabeth Huntley BA ’25, and Alina Cruz BA ’25, who assembled the collection as a labor of love over the course of the 2021-22 academic year.

Published annually and run entirely by L&C students, the Literary Review provides creative writers and artists with direct experience in generating submissions and laying out a magazine, culminating in an edition with poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and visual art. Submissions are accepted from students, faculty, and staff in the undergraduate college, law school, and graduate school. The Review’s editorial board evaluates submissions through an anonymous, collaborative process during weekly meetings throughout the academic year.

The 2022 Literary Review, titled bone meal, was the first post-pandemic edition of the magazine, and it generated an unprecedented number of submissions. As the leadership team reviewed the entries, they began to notice certain patterns. These repeating elements would go on to inform the collection’s three distinct thematic sections: growth, decay, and regrowth–as well as the visual theme of carnivorous plants, designed by Zachary Reinker BA ’23.

Coeditor-in-chief Jillian Jackson BA ’23
Credit: Nina JohnsonCoeditor-in-chief Jackson said these themes manifested in a variety of creative ways. “You have, for example, Keshav Eldurkar’s hilarious story, ‘Polar Bears Can’t Fall in Love, Stupid,’ about this tentative new romance the narrator starts out resisting. That’s a piece about growth,” said Jackson. “But then you have something like Cleo Lockhart’s ‘Pertaining to Bone,’ a wicked parable about flesh-eating birds. That’s decay.”

The name bone meal was proposed by Huntley. The literal meaning is a fertilizer made from finely ground animal bones, but it also represented the cycles of regeneration found in the 2021-22 selections.

Coeditor-in-chief AJ Di Nicola BA ’24“As college students, we’re all learning how to grow up. You see lighter takes, you see darker takes. But for all of us, there are these different aspects and interpretations of growth,” said coeditor-in-chief Di Nicola.

The editorial board was supported by faculty advisor Mary Szybist, Morgan S. Odell Professor of Humanities. March said working with her was an “absolute pleasure”; she guided the team with generative questions, shared her experience with facilitation, and encouraged students to submit work.

The National Program Directors’ Prize for Content is recognition of the literary talent across the Lewis & Clark community, as well as an endorsement of the hard work of the editorial board. The Literary Review last won the award in 2002.

Several members of the editorial board became involved with the review in their first year at Lewis & Clark, and many major in fields outside of the humanities, a testament to the inclusiveness of the magazine. For Jackson, the college’s literary scene was a driving force in her decision to attend Lewis & Clark, where she first was given an issue of the Synergia: Journal of Gender Thought and Expression on a campus tour.

Design assistant Elizabeth Huntley BA ’25“The Literary Review is for anyone who loves, cares about, or even has a passing interest in writing or literature,” said Huntley. “We want to hear from anyone who has a creative spark in them–that’s what the Review is all about.”

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Submissions and questions about the 2023-24 Palatine Hill Review can be sent to phreview@lclark.edu.

Literary Review English