The Rubicon is Troy University’s student-run, student-established literary journal, a place for students whose affair with words is adoring yet rigorous to express themselves in the most intimate and satisfying way.
Founded in 2009, the Rubicon has published various types of submissions including prose, poetry and nonfiction from committed students of many Troy campuses. It is also considering accepting plays, lyrics and essays to allow more people with different writing talents to participate.
On Tuesday the journal held an interest meeting to attract prospective staff members for this semester.
“Everything is fun at the Rubicon,” said Samantha Loff, a senior English major from Dothan, the journal’s current editor-in-chief.
“Working at the Rubicon, I get to see different perspectives from students’ submissions. From a viewpoint of an English major, it is interesting to see the ways international students or maybe political science majors think.”
Students from all departments are welcome to join the Rubicon. This year the responsibilities of staff members will be slightly different from the previous semesters.
In the past everyone got together mainly to read and edit submissions. Now the Rubicon will be divided into editing, funding and publicity committees. Loff explained that by allocating the tasks this way, everyone could feel more involved and would come out of the experience feeling they did something specific for the Rubicon, instead of just general participation.
Loff hopes the staff will grow in size this year, with around 20 members.
The editor-in-chief also has an ambitious goal for the Rubicon.
The journal is trying to generate more funding to print more copies. They could only make around a hundred copies of the past issues.
Loff would like for the journal to be able to produce a thicker publication with more materials this time, including submissions from alumni and local high school students.
“As a creative writing student,” Loff said, “I know the feeling of rejection.”
“But getting published… there’s nothing like it. All the fear and the difficulties of putting my works out there are well worth it. I hope the pride and confidence students get from their hands-on experience with the Rubicon would encourage them to submit their work elsewhere.”
One challenge for the journal is the isolation of the community.
“We are trying to get the theater and dance department more involved in this,” Loff said. “We got some great illustrations from the graphic design department before, but this year it would be great if we can get theater majors to do some dramatic reading of students’ poetry for our poetry reading day, which is an event hosted by the English department.”
As for publicity, the Rubicon is also working on getting itself recognized as an official student organization on campus. They are making their constitution and bylaw for the SGA to consider.
When asked about her future vision for the Rubicon, Loff said she would love to see the Rubicon work toward the model of the Alabama Literary Review, a well-established, state-sponsored literary journal run by Troy University’s English department.
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