Ivory Tower is the University of Minnesota’s undergraduate art and literary magazine. We publish a free annual issue of submitted creative work, from fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, to dramatic texts, audio and video, to art and photography. Our magazine is by undergraduates, for undergraduates.
I worked as Nonfiction Editor, Teaser Editor, and Tweeter for the 2011-2012 year. Our staff worked to include all artists in the University of Minnesota and Twin Cities community in as many creative endeavors as possible. We don’t want our magazine to be picked up, read, and put on a bookshelf for years. We want to played with. We want to be interactive. We want everyone to add to our pages.
We created a “Poetree” by decorating a tree on campus, filled with ornaments and photographs and words from our favorite poems. Watch the video here!
We have “Write and Return” stations with notebooks of hand-written poems and stories, writing prompts, quotes, and questions. They are located around campus and encourage students to always be writing, drawing, imagining.
I led and designed the Teaser Edition of our magazine. We used an old letterpress to make a broadside of excerpts from pieces in our final version of the magazine. The Teaser launched April 4th at a successful party I planned and hosted! We had readings by John Colburn, MC Hyland, and Guante, hors d’oeuvres, and classical guitar-playing by our very own Web and Special Content Editor. Overall, we had a fantastic night, and I felt proud to have completed an exciting new project with the wonderful Ivory Tower staff.
The print version of our magazine launched April 25th. We gathered in The Whole on the University of Minnesota campus to eat and meet our contributors. Students performed their written and musical work on stage while artwork was displayed. We had many surprise guests from influential literary people in the community, such as members of Paper Darts and Beaver’s Pond Press. It was rewarding and humbling to be supported for our hard yearlong work.
Check out our website (created and designed by our talented staff) for information on upcoming events, to read issues and the staff blog, and donate to our magazine!
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