A Magazine Given a Second Chance →

If you travel to the back of Campus Center South, you will find a flight of stairs to your left. Take them to the basement, hang a right and walk till you’re just shy of the exit to the dumpster and room 0024/0025 will be on the left, the place I love most on this campus.

Gutter Mag began in the basement as a student-run zine that was distributed all over campus. It has transformed over the years, but has stuck to its DIY roots and is now an 11×8.5 stapled, monthly issue. Thanks to a faulty printer, the issues are hand-folded and therefore still look very much homemade.

I was first introduced to Gutter Mag as a freshman. By then, it was already a full sized, biweekly issue. I was too nervous to go to the meetings but poured over the issues when I came across them on a table or magazine rack around campus. By the time I finally got up the nerve to be more than just a reader, Gutter had ceased to exist. It was a quiet goodbye–issues had at first just become less frequent. By spring of my sophomore year they were down to just one issue a semester. Summer before junior year, Edyn Getz took it upon herself to relaunch Gutter Mag. The PSGA allowed her to do so. The budget was small and the charter needed to be tossed and recreated, but it was a start. Edyn asked me if I would assist her in bringing the literary mag back to life and I jumped at the opportunity and was given the title of Managing Editor.

Now, as a senior, being Editor-in-Chief of Gutter Mag has certainly been a learning experience. Falling in love with a publication and then being given the opportunity to run it has resulted in hours of planning, emailing, hand folding, and asking the printer if it would please do what I ask just this once.

I feel that Gutter’s place on this campus is essential. Gutter’s mission is to provide an opportunity for students of any major or background to see their art in print. Many students on this campus create original content outside of what they study. Our monthly issues give those students the opportunity to see their work in print alongside other creators on this campus. It allows them to be part of something bigger than themselves. Last year was our comeback year. We rebuilt from the rubble and continued to remember how we started.

Presently, Gutter produces monthly full-sized issues with smaller zines interspersed throughout the semesters. We work alongside the other services on this campus, such as The Forum Art Space and WPSR, to promote upcoming shows and remind students of the Safer Space Policy. We release our issues at student run events to encourage our readers to take advantage of all of the art available to see and experience on campus. We meet monthly (usually on Wednesday nights) to open submissions and discuss what we want for the upcoming issue. There is nothing more rewarding than seeing a room full of faces eager to create work for a magazine that’s been given a second chance.

In this next phase of Gutter Mag, we want to make every student on this campus feel welcomed and included. We want the issues to feel like they are for them, and the best way to do that is to get submissions from as many students as possible. I have loved Gutter Mag as an admirer, a contributor, and now as its Editor, and I want nothing more than for it to thrive on this campus. Help me make that possible and send us your art, poetry, short fiction, recipes, graphic art, prints, comics, doodles, rants, horoscopes, any  and all of it to purchaseguttermag@gmail.com.