Faculty mentors lead way The guiding force behind SLAB are advisers Danette DiMarco, SRU professor of English, and Mark O’Connor, SRU associate professor of English. They mentor budding writers, generate enthusiasm and lead students to conferences offered by The Association of Writing and Writing Programs. They hunt down interesting cover artists. Sometimes the artists are local, sometimes they’re nationally known. DiMarco and O’Connor said they do not meddle in the selection of content, allowing students to follow an editorial review process to determine the final product. “SLAB is the most fun part of my job,” O’Connor said. “I see students. They are not getting paid, and they’re not getting course credit. And yet, I see them working hard and diligently as professional editors, which they are, and doing this really good work. And then they see the great cover. It’s like a kid on a birthday. They’re really proud to have such a distinguished product.” SLAB copyrights original writing in four categories: fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction and text and image. Students pursue edgy, contemporary writing, including flash
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SLAB is an excellent way for students to gain real-world experience and is by far my best memory from Slippery Rock University.
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–Amy Choate, ’10
fiction and graphic novel elements. The 2012 edition contains more than 50 pieces, including a fiction essay titled “The Dog Whisperer’s Wife” and poetry titled “Tease” and “No Clue.” Conventional it is not. Nor does SLAB pander to the e-reader. Aside from the cover, SLAB includes no color, and 90 percent of the magazine consists of unadorned text set in Helvetica typeface. “We are not interested in stories about your parents getting divorced when you were 15. We’ve seen that story a thousand times,” O’Connor said. “Students know that. They’re 18, 19, 20, so they’re interested in cool, emerging, weird work. And it’s not 18
The ROCK
Winter 2013
like we agree with every single piece that’s in SLAB. I think it is really important that the content is selected by students.” SLAB launched in 2006, replacing Ginger Hill, which featured only student writing. SLAB takes a broader approach by accepting global submissions. The magazine operates a website (http://academics.sru.edu/slablitmag/) and emphasizes the production side of the magazine and trying to get it to be as national as possible, O’Connor said. Writers electronically submit their poetry, fiction, nonfiction or graphic-based work entries via the website. SLAB also places ads in Poets and Writers and The Writer’s Chronicle magazines. Contributors do not get paid. “Each year we’re out there builds on the previous years’ work,” O’Connor said. “The 45 writers we publish list us on their web pages and tell friends, so we are known, and each year it gets better and better.” DiMarco said SLAB helps undergraduates develop confidence. “We’ve watched some of our students who have been a little more shy come right out of their shells and blossom – they come out of their little cocoons,” DiMarco said. “It’s extremely exciting to watch them get confidence and to do things they would never do. The fact that they can sit down and write an email professionally and make a phone call that they might not have been able to do prior to their experience with SLAB.”
Alums value SLAB Alumni who worked for SLAB said it was a highlight of their undergraduate education. Aaron Lefebvre, a 2011 English graduate from Sparta, served as database manager and fiction editor. He organized reader groups to pour over fiction submissions and rate them on a scale of 1-3. “For submissions with good scores among the readers, we would read them, proofread them and make edit proposals to the managing editors who would then contact the author if a serious edit was required before publication,” Lefebvre said. While SLAB publishes around 10 fiction pieces per edition, many more writers get turned away. “Sometimes it felt like there were so many submissions to sort through. I realized how important it was that an editor love reading more than editing,” he said. “I’ve spoken with other editors, from small magazines up to big name publishing houses, and they often come off as reading-lovers above all else.” Lefebvre, who finished a master’s degree in creative writing from Rutgers University in the fall and is writing a novel that explores the impact of natural gas fracking in southwestern Pennsylvania, said SLAB was a great experience. “I liked being part of a team and collaborating among different levels of staff and working really hard, often to the last minute, spending hours in the SLAB office to make deadlines so