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Founded in 1966 at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, the state’s oldest literary journal—the Wisconsin Review—is celebrating its 50-year anniversary.

The spring 2016 issue, available now, features six prose pieces, 23 poems and nine works of art, including the cover photo.

UW Oshkosh  students are the editors in charge of creating the literary journal. The faculty advisers for the publication, UWO English professors Stewart Cole and Stephen McCabe, oversee the project to ensure things go smoothly.

Cole said it is a rewarding experience to see the students’ create the journal.

“Seeing that a small staff of students can get this done, taking hundreds of submissions from across the country and turning them into an actual printed journal—and seeing how readily students take on that responsibility—is very rewarding.”

The team of student editors includes senior editor Alex Albertson, of Neenah, editorial assistant Nikita Willeford, of Oshkosh, managing editor Megan Esau, of Greendale, poetry editor Zachary Thede, of Evansville, fiction editor Jordan Plank, of Brookfield and art editor Jacqueline Joyce, of Neosho.

Albertson said her biggest responsibilities as senior editor include managing the staff and the timeline for creating the journal. She graduates this spring and said she hopes this experience will help her get a job in publishing.

Along with the editors, there also is a team of readers who review the submissions to help determine what should go in the journal. Albertson said the readers are usually people who are interested in creative writing or have taken English classes.

butterflyJPGUWO senior and graphic design major Desiree Mae Forget, of De Pere, has her artwork “Steel Skull” and “Mystic Butterfly” featured in the spring issue of the journal and “Steel Skull” is on the cover.

Forget said “Steel Skull” is a piece she created in Michael Beitz’s sculpture class inspired by a deer skull painting she made in high school. She said the goal of the assignment was to create a 3D drawing using contour lines.

In order to create “Steel Skull,” Forget said she had to face one of her biggest fears…welding.

“It took a lot of my full body strength to create the ‘Steel Skull’ and a lot of trial and error getting the welds to hold in place,” Forget said. “It was very stressful at times but the outcome was definitely worth it.”

Forget said her other featured piece “Mystic Butterfly” is a personal acrylic painting she created a few years ago. She said butterflies are beautiful to paint abstractly and are spiritually symbolic to her.

“The butterfly piece was all about instinctive marks and playing around with the paint and textures,” Forget said. “This was one of my first paintings where I began to develop my own style, so it will always mean a lot to me.”

Albertson said anyone is allowed to submit pieces to the literary journal and a diversity of submissions have come in from people in Japan and Switzerland and even from people taking creative writing class in jail.

“It’s usually submissions from writers who are somewhat established because they are the ones who are seeking out journals to publish in,” she said. “But we get stuff from people who have never been published before. It is always exciting when that happens, too.”

The Wisconsin Review allows for simultaneous submissions, which Albertson said is rare for literary journals. This means people can send their work to the Wisconsin Review and another journal at the same time.

UWO students can get a free copy of the Wisconsin Review, while others can either pay $15 for a yearly subscription or $10 for the newest issue.

Those interested in being a part of the Wisconsin Review should send an email to wisconsinreview@uwosh.edu.