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The Suisun Valley Review was established as a way for the students of Solano Community College to learn the art and craft of editing a literary journal while putting together their own magazine once a year. Since the first issue was published in 1981, student editors have collaborated on over thirty issues of SVR, carefully selecting the contents from new and established writers from across the U.S. and abroad. The students are also directly involved with creating the overall design aesthetic and narrative of each issue. Each spring, all of their hard work and endless creative energy is repaid with a bound collection of prose and poetry, sold and kept as a testament to sleepless nights.
SVR's 2014 Submission Guidelines

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Let's Feel Inspired

      February is here, and so it brings with it dark clouds, cold nights, the Olympics and the start of the editors over here at The Suisun Valley Review to come to a collective understanding of what a good piece of short fiction or poetry truly is. We all have gone out to the local bookstores in search of small literary magazines, such as ours, to find pieces published in them that we all really enjoy. We each picked one piece, and put them all together in a packet that acts as our textbook. This packet of published work has been the focal point for us editors for the week. Every single piece in the packet has been scrutinized for things such as its overall craft, and quality as written work. We had to ask ourselves questions like, “What makes a poem a good poem and what makes a piece of short fiction outstanding?” All of the work we will receive as submissions to our mag will be fantastic, but we need to figure out as a class what makes a piece great and what it makes it truly amazing. Our goal is to publish only the best and the awe inspiring. It’s a tough goal to accomplish, but by looking at the works already published, we have taken to first step in accomplishing this goal.

     We've also begun to look for things that inspire design. It’s time to start thinking about what the internal layout of our magazine should be, and there are a lot of things to consider, things that wouldn’t even have crossed one’s mind if they weren’t creating a literary magazine from scratch. Like the spacing between the first and last name of the published author, and the color of the page number. These are all tough decisions that eventually must be made. To make those decisions we have to look at things that inspire us as editors and as designers of a literary journal. We've looked at things such as the color of the ski boots worn by Olympic downhill skiers or even the splash page of a different literary journal. Sometimes it just takes a second to sit back and look at the world for the inspiring. Our goal is to create a design that inspires the reader.

A part of the class got together to create a display case showcasing the literary magazine in the English department here at Solano Community College. It really turned out great!

2014 SVR Display Case in the 700 building at SCC