Anniversary event to celebrate 50 years of the riverrun literary and arts journal

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the UCCS literary and arts journal: riverrun. To celebrate, riverrun organizers have planned an event that will reflect on the journal’s history and give new students a taste of what riverrun is like.

The riverrun anniversary event will include an open mic session. The riverrun community, including alumni and the current editorial team, will celebrate half a century of the program and share stories from their time working on the journal.

The event will be held on Friday, Nov. 4, from 5-7 p.m. in the Kraemer Family Library. It is free for students to attend. Refreshments are also provided to attendees, as well as free copies of the riverrun journal.

The journal publishes student work ranging from poetry to performances in a professional online and physical journal format each spring.

The journal features a variety of creative works with an emphasis on student contribution over faculty. According to faculty advisor Chris Martin, “riverrun is theirs, not mine. That’s the beauty of it.”

The journal is on its 50th issue, and the program put in extra effort to make this issue stand out from the rest. Specifically, the entire riverrun community collaborated to make a special cover and flyleaf for the issue.

Martin said, “The editors for volume 49 tabled at the Student Club Fair and led folks in writing and art prompts. The results were documented in the flyleaf. And the front cover features lines from work in the issue that the editors wanted to call out. For me, the result is immensely heartening.”

The riverrun editorial course, ENGL 3170, is open to all majors and counts as a Compass Curriculum Navigate class. The internship-style course gives students opportunities to help out with different aspects of the journal, from gathering submissions to editing and printing.

Submitting to the journal is free, and students are not required to enroll in the course to be published in the journal. Students from all majors are encouraged to submit their work for the next issue in the spring.

To learn more about riverrun, visit their website.

Student Roberta Martinez reads the 2021-2022 edition of Riverrun. Photo by Lillian Davis.