College launches new student magazine

By Steffanie Costigan - Lethbridge Herald Local Journalism Initiative Reporter on April 20, 2024.

Lethbridge College has launched a literary magazine that allows students to share their stories, photography and even poetry.
Although students could register for the college course during the winter semester, the magazine, Ursa Minor, was officially launched this week by instructor Amy Hodgson-Bright.
“This publication came out of a new course at Lethbridge college called English-2291 Literary Magazine,” Hodgson-Bright said. “Basically (students), edit, market, distribute student works of poetry, short stories, fiction, photography, and art. So, the entire magazine is run by students and all publications are by students.”
The new course is run out of the General Arts and Sciences program at Lethbridge College. It’s first, and only, student, Theresa Ogaosun, said she had second thoughts about joining the class when she found out she would be the only student, but she’s happy she registered.
“It was actually very interesting to actually work on this project,” Ogaosun said. “I wasn’t really interested in joining the class since I was the only person, but eventually I just thought to myself, this is a good project, this is something that is really nice to work on. I’ve worked in a newspaper before. So, this is quite different, but I felt like this was something familiar and was a good project to work on.”
All writing and photography in the Ursa Minor magazine are submitted works from students, and students do not need to be in the course to submit their works for publication.
Hodgson-Bright said Ursa Minor was made possible by a grant Lethbridge College received, which helped it get off the ground and will help it move forward.
“Next year, we will be publishing Volume 2 of Ursa Minor, and we’re all going to just be looking for even more student work to publish,” Hodgson-Bright said. “The only change we might make next year, is instead of having a printed copy we might go to digital publishing only.”
Ogaosun said she believes readers of the magazine will enjoy the diverse content submitted by students.
“They get a lot of versatile works,” Ogaosun said. “They get an experience, they get an idea into what the students write. There are really, really good passages (in) the magazine. We’ve got stories and they’re really good. We’ve got photographs, as well. It’s just very diverse work, and it’s all by the student for the students and to the students.”
Ogaosun wrote a poem called Nothingness, which was published in Ursa Minor magazine and shows the state of mind she was in while writing the poem.
“I think it was when I wrote this poem, when it was at a time where I was really going through a lot of things mentally. I was depressed and I like to write when I’m (unable to) talk to anyone, when I can’t share my feelings with anyone, so I wrote this poem just to express how I felt.”
That expression fits perfectly in the college’s expanded creative writing programs.
“Lethbridge College has really just increased their capacity for creative writing courses, like we have a really strong focus on creative writing,” Hodgson-Bright said. “So having this new publication to highlight and celebrate the student work that’s happening in courses is really exciting.”

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