The staff of the University of Maine at Presque Isle’s online literary journal is celebrating the publication of its latest issue with an official Upcountry Reading and Launch Party at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 9 in the Normal Hall Faculty Lounge.
The celebration will serve as the official launch of Upcountry’s Fall/Winter issue. The journal’s student editors Mika Ouellette and Barat Qualey will be on hand, as will journal advisor Dr. Melissa Crowe. Several of this issue’s 18 contributors also will be in attendance to read from their work. Paper copies of the issue will be available and refreshments will be provided. The reading and launch party is free and open to the public.
“We’re very excited about the party; the Fall/Winter issue is the culmination of a lot of hard work, on the part of the student staff and the writers whose work we published, and it’s wonderful to have the opportunity to celebrate that work with the community,” Crowe said.
Upcountry, a publication of the University’s English Program, is dedicated to showcasing poems, short stories, personal essays and visual art from the campus community. It is published twice yearly.
For this latest issue, staffers embraced an interactive new browsable magazine format to give people easier access to the work of the writers, poets and artist from the campus community featured in it. The digital publishing platform they used allows pages of uploaded print material to be viewed much like a traditional printed publication, with animated, flipping pages and left-to-right page viewing. The digital version is viewable at http://upcountryjournal.wordpress.com/.
In keeping with literary journal tradition, however, the Upcountry staff is hosting the launch party to give contributors and the wider community a chance to share the work in person and take home a hard copy of the Fall/Winter issue.
“The work in the issue is very good, and I hope lots of folks will come out to listen to some of that work and maybe learn a bit more about the journal—we’ll be open for submissions for the Spring/Summer issue in the coming weeks,” Crowe said.
For more information about the reading and launch party, please email the staff at upcountry@maine.edu.