by Delaney Crawford//
Wisteria is the creative writing, literary and arts club at Hood College that has been around for 22 years now.
The club publishes an annual Wisteria magazine every spring semester that includes work from members of the club and any other student who has submitted work.
The submission drive for Wisteria opens in the fall and ends right after the conclusion of winter break. The club’s review board meets every month to judge the submitted pieces. During this process, the names are redacted to avoid bias.
Weekly meetings are held for club members to workshop pieces and do writing prompts.
Vice Editor Natalie Kolosieke will bring a prompt to each meeting and the members are given a set amount of time to write a piece and share. These meetings provide students a way to improve their writing in a non-judgmental setting.
“Attending Wisteria meetings feels like I am hanging out with my best friends. Through sharing art and stories, we get close to one another and the group builds strong connections,” Editor Caylee Winpigler said. “The people of the group are people who respect you, want to see you thrive and support you. Wisteria is truly a group of people who care about one another and are friends.”
The club is fairly small right now with around 25 members but only about 10 who attend every meeting. Wisteria has plenty of room to welcome new students who want to join.
“Assembling the magazine every year is a favorite memory of mine,” Winpigler said. “Sharing the magazine with students is a joy. To see the excitement of those students who have been published or hear that one of the published pieces really made an impact on someone brings me so much pride and happiness.”
The club’s social media manager, Sanya Grace Kunicki, has recently designed a blog for Wisteria. Members hope that the blog will inspire other Hood students to submit blog posts and to grab a niche of readers and writers that the magazine currently doesn’t have.
“I can’t emphasize enough how much one can get from the experience of putting together a literary arts magazine from start to finish, not only helping a preliminary idea grow into a polished publication but doing this in the company of people who are passionate about writing and visual arts,” Wistera adviser Amy Gottfried said. “Currently, the organization also offers a space for students to get together and share their work, in the form of ongoing workshops.”
The Wisteria Literary Magazine will be published in May. Hood students who want a copy can email cmw30@hood.edu with the intended mailing address. If any students are interested in learning more or joining Wisteria, email cmw30@hood.edu or sgk2@hood.edu.
Great article!