By Jenna Fiaretti, Staff Writer
Iconoclast and the English Department collaborated to host a writing competition open to high school juniors and seniors in Western New York. This year’s title for the competition is Unmute.
The competition received twenty-one submissions total across ten or more high schools. From these submissions, a few professors and Iconoclast editors chose the winners.
The writing competition is a relatively new addition to Daemen’s English department, having only been conceptualized last academic year. The criteria are broad, as students are able to submit any academic writing, creative writing and student media they are proud of. The best in each category will win a one-thousand-dollar scholarship to the university and the best overall will receive a three-thousand-dollar scholarship known as the Resonance Award. There’s also a special award for student media teams called The Echo Chamber. There were no student media teams who submitted this year, so only the Best In Academic Writing, Best In Creative Writing and Best Overall will be awarded.
Even though Unmute has been held at Daemen before, this year is the first year that Iconoclast has had a part to play in it.
“Last year, Iconoclast was not involved,” said Robert Waterhouse, associate professor of theatre. “This year, we thought it would add prestige to the winners of the competition if their work was published, so it was natural to look to Iconoclast. Luke Daly, Iconoclast’s faculty sponsor, agreed that Daemen student involvement would augment the competition and put the idea to the student editors. We were in business.”
The Iconoclast is a student-run literary magazine consisting of photography, artwork, poems, creative writing and non-fiction pieces. Undergraduate students submit their works to iconoclast@daemen.edu for student editors to review.
“We send out a call for submissions about a month before our deadline to send to the publishers,” Kaity Hersee, sophomore English major and head editor of Iconoclast, said. “After that, we set a date for the whole club to meet, print out all of the submissions, and sit down in the Oscar Wilde room to go through them all. We typically go through the art, edit the writing, and pick the ones we want to accept, and then we put the rest into another pile for consideration if we have the extra space. Once we’ve decided which we want in the edition, we work together to create a layout to send out to our publishers and receive the finished copy.”
The club is a little over ten years old and still steadily growing, publishing numerous student works once a semester, twice per year. Students involved with Iconoclast are skilled in layout design, writing, editing, communication and most of all, persistence. The club provides real-world experience with editing and publishing as students deal with the back and forth that comes with making a publication. They are expected to expertly handle criticism, strict deadlines and setbacks with a professional attitude.
“I imagine we reached out to Iconoclast because it’s driven by enthusiastic, talented, and hardworking students that want to share their creative output with a wider audience,” Charlie Wesley, English department associate professor, said. “They are amazing.”
While the Iconoclast had never been part of a contest like this before, the members took the challenge in stride. After an editorial meeting debating whether or not they should take the submissions, it was decided that the two parties would work together to ensure the best works would be published. The biggest challenge was ensuring that the high school students felt valued while also preserving the integrity of the Iconoclast as an undergraduate literary journal.
“After quite a lot of interesting artistic deliberation, we settled on a format that we think people will really like,” Luke Daly, English department adjunct instructor and Iconoclast’s faculty advisor, said. “It preserves Iconoclast’s sense of being a dedicated undergraduate literary journal produced ‘by Daemen and for Daemen,’ while also connecting to broader rings of our region’s artistic community in what we think is a pretty innovative way. We’re excited to present it at our launch party in late April.”
The new format is a ten-page insert dedicated to Unmute’s three award winners, showcasing their hard work and dedication to literature. The insert includes three short stories written by the award winners. While the insert will still be included with Daemen undergraduate students in the publication, it will have its own special section. The English Department and Iconoclast members then invited the high school award winners to the official Iconoclast launch party taking place on April 23 of this year. There, they will have the opportunity to read their works aloud and celebrate their achievements with light snacks and a free copy of the Iconoclast zine.
“I thought the writing competition was a unique way for high schoolers to win scholarship money to Daemen by expressing themselves in their own words,” Kara Gioia, sophomore social work major and Iconoclast officer, said. “We did have a few challenges with it, such as format and submission issues, but it all worked out in the end.”
Though club members and faculty alike are uncertain about whether Iconoclast will be assisting with Unmute next year, some students and staff expressed wanting to do similar events in the future. Among the ideas mentioned were printing all of the Unmute submissions instead of just some, participating in more artistic partnerships with the community and potentially sponsoring a large writing competition and workshop across multiple local universities. Both the Iconoclast and Unmute alike are anticipating bigger, better things to come next year.