Art
A Place for Student Voices: Behind the Pages of NIC’s Trestle Creek Review
The Trestle Creek Review (TCR), NIC’s student-run literary magazine, enters its final week of submissions for this year’s 40th edition of the magazine.
Submissions will be open until February 14th, and the magazine will be launched in the courtyard behind Boswell Hall on May 5th. Students are encouraged to submit their work and invited to participate in the launch.
“I was hoping to help students on campus see that this is a great outlet that’s accessible for them as a writer, it’s already familiar, and it’s close to them. It can feel intimidating to submit to some big magazine out there, but this is their home literary magazine, and I want it to feel accessible,” said student editor Mallorie Flynn.
Faculty advisor Jonathan Frey and several student staff members echoed this sentiment, saying that they would love to see more NIC student submissions in this year’s magazine.
“Don’t self-reject,” Frey said, “Don’t say ‘well my work’s not good enough. My work doesn’t belong at this caliber.’ Don’t self-reject. There’s value in the process, even if you are pretty sure it’s not great, there is value in the process.”
The Trestle Creek Review submission form can be found here- Trestle Creek Review Submission Manager
The Trestle Creek Review is run by an editorial board made entirely of NIC students, receiving submissions from the Coeur d’Alene community as well as the wider Pacific Northwest. They have had the pleasure of publishing fiction, nonfiction, and poetry work from NIC professors, students, and faculty, as well as the work of local community members and established authors in the PNW.
“We get to see the light which these pieces hold,” said TCR student editor Isabel Howard, “and when one shines especially brightly, we get to make the decision as a committee to publish it.”
The Trestle Creek Review can be taken as a class at NIC and is only available in the spring. Students such as Howard who want to pursue a leadership role have the opportunity to return the next year as student editors. The student editors, with the help of Frey, work with the staff as they receive and review pieces that will be featured in the final magazine.
“It’s a really impressive group of people who we feature,” Silvia, a TCR staff member, said. “So it’s a fairly serious literary journal.”
Beyond showcasing the work of talented writers in the Coeur d’Alene area, the TCR’s purpose is to introduce students to the behind-the-scenes work of publishing.
In pursuit of this goal, the TCR has recently implemented new submission software that aligns more with the technology used in professional literary magazines.
Frey said, “I want the editors and all the staff to experience what it actually looks like on the back end of a literary magazine and since the vast majority of literary magazines use this submission software it seems apt to go ahead and bring one of them on board for us.”
While several editors and staff members for TCR are striving to one day pursue a career in publishing, others participate in the class simply to become familiar with the places they may be submitting their work.
TCR staff member Ezra Tickemyer said, “I think it’s really important to be able to engage in conversations that really help provide clarity of what folks are looking for behind the scenes so that you know how to navigate your stuff moving forward. It’s important to know it’s not going into a black void.”