Dear LLCC colleagues,

As many of you know, Lincoln Land Community College has traditionally produced two annual magazines of student writing. One began in 1998 when Paul Van Heuklom started The Ruptured Seed, a journal of student creative writing. The second annual publication, the Harvester, featured LLCC composition students’ essays for thirty-seven years; for the past eighteen of these years, Gloria Kirby edited the magazine. Paul decided to end his editorship of TRS in 2006. Gloria is retiring in May 2009 and, as a result, has passed her Harvester baton along.

It is hard to imagine these publications without Paul and Gloria. It is no surprise that it will take multiple faculty editors to take their place. Paul began a new Lincoln Land tradition with TRS, and Gloria worked tirelessly to make The Harvester a vibrant and beautiful publication. We want to thank both Paul and Gloria for their hard work on behalf of supporting student writing at Lincoln Land.

After much discussion among the five new editors, we have decided to collaborate to produce one new magazine, which also receives a new name: The Lincoln Land Review. The Lincoln Land Review will include the best student writing, academic and creative, from across-the-curriculum. The newly founded Lincoln Land Press funds our new publication. Look for more information on the Press soon, as it will be soliciting proposals from faculty for book length writing projects.

This is all in the future, but in order for the future to become real, the editors need you to submit your best student writing as soon as possible. As Composition instructors, we have grown used to culling the best writing from our students. We now invite you to send your best student essays, research papers, or possibly even a unique journal assignment.

Additionally, we are looking for creative writing—poetry, short stories, creative non-fiction. Please tell your students to submit these works through you or to us directly. Creative writing does not have to have been produced for a class assignment.

But, please, do submit student work as soon as possible. We want a Spring 2009 publication—in other words, this spring. We need your submissions by the end of this semester.

Thank you very much.

Best,

Deborah Brothers

Thom Whalen

John Paul Jaramillo

Alison Stachera

Eric Stachera