UMSL students on the Litmag staff (from left) Aiden Peterson, Myles Thurman, Mia Music and Lauren Johns worked to cull 200 submissions and produce the annual publication. (Photo courtesy of Kate Watt)

About 70 members of the University of Missouri–St. Louis community gathered in Century Room A in the Millennium Student Center on Feb. 27 to launch the 37th installment of Litmag.

“Art, both making it and taking it in, is so fundamental to a meaningful life,” said author Sarah Kiser, MFA student and the event’s featured guest speaker. “Litmag offers the chance at both to the UMSL community, and part of what makes it so great is that anyone from anywhere at UMSL can submit. It brings people together from across campus and beyond, and it’s a real labor of love from everyone involved, which you can feel when you hold it in your hands. It’s truly a beautiful gift.”

As editor-in-chief, MFA student Aiden Peterson helmed this year’s edition of the annual student-run UMSL literary and art journal, and he led a culling of roughly 200 submissions down to 25 pieces of art, poetry and prose from campus creators. This year’s edition is slimmer than previous years, as it was produced with a total of five staff members including Peterson.

It was a challenge, but one the staff met readily.

“Selecting the pieces for each issue is always a difficult process and nearly all of them are subjects of discussion during the selection process,” Peterson said. “In order to make it into the book, they must pass two separate rounds of editor scrutiny in a blind double-review process. Meaning that the editors do not know who has submitted, only the work itself.”

The theme and subtitle of the issue, “Fractured,” is meant to evoke the trials and tribulations of life that can leave people feeling broken, but that ultimately lead to a brighter future.

“We very quickly settled on a visual theme of broken glass, which made it onto the cover of the book,” Peterson said. “It also made it into the names of the section dividers. Those being: Reflections, Fractured, Shattered, Mending and Restoration. We wanted it to follow the feelings one could get during the awful parts of life that break you down and show that you can still find the beauty of life in those moments.”

Last month’s celebration also served as an opportunity to honor Eamonn Wall, the recently retired Smurfit-Stone Corporation Professor of Irish Studies at UMSL. Wall is a celebrated author who has published eight collections of poetry as well as three books of cultural and literary criticism. He’s also been a long-time booster of the magazine, sponsoring it for more than a decade.

In addition to financial backing, Wall has often been quick to offer moral support and guidance to UMSL’s aspiring poets and writers. At a previous Litmag launch, he kicked off the festivities with a humorous, but hopeful, reminiscence about his college literary magazine.

“In my own college, University College Dublin, we had a literary magazine called St. Stephen’s,” Wall said. “It was called that after the location of the university originally on St. Stephen’s Green, right in the center of Dublin. It’s still running today but is most famous for refusing to publish an article entitled, ‘Day of the Rabblement,’ by James Joyce. That James Joyce, of course, turned out to be the greatest writer ever. So, if there’s anybody here in this room who submitted to Litmag this year, and their work was not accepted, think of James Joyce.”

The Litmag staff dedicated “Fractured” to Wall in honor of his contributions over the years, and renamed the magazine’s annual accolades to the “Eamonn Wall Litmag Writing Awards.” Senior Jessica Wojicik won the Eamonn Wall Litmag Award in Poetry for “Hypervigilance,” while graduate student Jordan Kaddouri was recognized in the prose category for “What We Asked For.” Senior Anna Tisdale rounded out the awards with acclaim for a piece of artwork titled, “The Dying Neon.”

Over the course of the night, several authors performed readings of their work, and the audience also heard from Kiser, whose debut novel, “Hunt the Ever Wild,” will be published in June.

“I am incredibly proud to have been a part of this year’s edition,” Peterson said of the final product. “All four of my co-editors did a stellar job. If any one of them hadn’t been a part of this publication, it wouldn’t have turned out half as well as it did. It was a tough but ultimately fulfilling experience that I’m glad to have had.”