Like many students at Salt Lake Community College, Jason McFarland is not only a full-time student but also works a full-time job. With all that McFarland had on his schedule, he still made time to be involved in SLCC’s literary magazine Folio.
For the past two years McFarland had worked on the magazine as a staff member and was last year’s literary editor. His job included collecting, editing and compiling between 100 to 200 student submissions for the magazine which included written works, visual arts, and multimedia. He even submitted his own multimedia art projects.
“Every semester was an incredible, rewarding experience,” wrote McFarland in an email about his Folio experience. “It was always a lot of fun to work with other passionate people to encourage SLCC’s creative students to share their work with other students through Folio. I really enjoyed my time.”
As students start to settle in to their classes this semester, there are many opportunities for them to find extracurricular activities and events that they can be involved in which can aid their career or academics. One event students can participate in is the Folio Zine where students can submit art and literary pieces for publication.
Folio is a student-run magazine that is published every spring and fall and is launched towards the end of the semester with a public reading event and gallery. Submissions include written forms of poetry, short stories, essays, non-fiction and even academic writings. Visual medium submissions such as multimedia productions film, photography and sculptures are also accepted.
Folio has been publishing student’s work since 1999. It originally started as an English department project that published essays from English 1010 and 2010 classes that has expanded to encompass art and other forms of literature. Every year there is a new editorial staff and a theme which incorporates the overall submissions of that given year.
“We’re still very much brainstorming ideas for this year and what direction we want to go,” said Brandon Alva, this year’s faculty advisor of the publication. “We definitely want to keep a lot of the good things going that Folio has been doing in the past, [such as] a lot of campus outreach. We want to publish a wide variety of submissions from all types of students, so that we can fairly represent the diverse population of the college.”
Last year’s themes were Memoria and Shiver & Sigh. The folio staff picks the theme after they have received the submissions and are inspired by those submissions for a particular title. The new editors that have been selected this year are C.J. Armantrout as the Literary Editor and Ryan Carter as Design Editor.
“I think the biggest thing that I would want students to know is that being involved with Folio in whatever way their schedule will allow can be a rewarding experience,” said Alva. “Just come out to our events, submit and get involved.”
As busy as McFarland’s schedule was he says that his experiences with Folio have helped him to discover his passion for the production of multimedia rich e-publications and other forms of digital storytelling. McFarland says that the experiences and relationships he gained from Folio have and will continue to benefit him academically and professionally for the rest of his life.
“I basically consider all the academic work I’m involved in means to that end: to give me knowledge and experience necessary to work fluently in a variety of multimedia arts and for various projects,” wrote McFarland. “I like multimedia content creation and plan on doing that for the rest of my life, in some form or other.”
McFarland is finishing up his degree here at SLCC in Film Production and General Education. He plans to transfer to another school next summer. His hope is to become a sound designer for film or commercial production or, with his experience as a literary editor, somewhere in the vast field of multimedia.
“I would encourage all creative students to submit work to Folio,” wrote McFarland. “The process of submitting is rewarding, in itself, but the friendships and feeling of creative-community that can result are incredibly encouraging and will undoubtedly result in new creative works. By sharing what you make you not only help others to share but raise the bar of quality artistic work.”
Fine arts, literary and multimedia submissions are currently being accepted. The submission deadline for the print edition is Oct. 10 and Oct. 22 for multimedia submissions. Check out the Folio website at www.folioslcc.org for more details on dates and submission guidelines.
