South’s Literary Magazine (Lit Mag) attended the Southwest Prairie Literary Festival (Lit Fest) on April 15 and they did not return home empty handed. The amount of this year’s winners topped the previous two years, winning six awards overall.
“It was awesome and the judges were great. They had a performance poet this year who was awesome. It was probably the best Lit Fest I’ve been to in three years,” said sponsor Grace Bogdan.
Several students won awards in multiple categories at Lit Fest. Isabel Feliciano (freshman) won second place for her narrative essay “Recovered,” Jeremy DeAnda (junior) won second place for his short story “The Discussion,” Angelyca Adcock (senior) won second place for her poem “Divorce,” and Susie Lara Flores (senior) won third place for her drama “Bright Lights, Big City.”
Ethan Mayer (senior) won an honorable mention for his essay “Traditions have Strength,” and Joey Calabrese (freshman) received an honorable mention for his narrative essay “Wasted Time.”
But that is not the only honor the magazine received this year. They were also nationally recognized.
“Successes for Lit Mag are usually a year behind. So in January I was informed that last year’s magazine was awarded the Above Average by the Nation Council of Teachers of English,” said Bogdan. This is the second year in a row Lit Mag has been rated Above Average.
The prep work for Lit Fest contains a lot of paperwork.
“On the teacher end, you have to collect all the entries, and then we have to Xerox all the entries without their names on them,” Bogdan said. The nameless entries are then submitted with a number on them for identification purposes. Bogdan said that this is done to eliminate the possibility of bias.
Lit Mag comes out on an unspecified date in May, and it contains three of the award winning pieces. The magazine will cost $3, and it will be sold during lunch periods.