W
hen Michael Gill, M.F.A., ’86 was a Hiram College student studying English and creative writing, he and his friends started an underground newspaper titled The Slobbering Doberman with
Great Big Teeth and a Wagging Tail Weekly in response to the College’s regular publication The Terrier. At the same time, he took part in an internship that landed him his first job out of college working at a federal government office in Washington, D.C., where he wrote press releases and radio scripts.
“All the things people say about the liberal arts—the ability to learn, to ask
questions and to deal with a range of subjects—are certainly true,” Gill said when I asked how Hiram College had prepared him for the world of work. Gill’s varied
The Literary Leanings of Alumnus Michael Gill, M.F.A., ’86 By Sara Shearer ’17
career as underground newspaper editor, poet, federal worker, public relations director, journalist and now publisher of an arts magazine also demonstrates the flexibility that a Hiram College degree offers.
Two years after graduation, Gill earned an M.F.A. in creative writing from
Eastern Washington University, solidifying his love of poetry, and he moved to Quito, Ecuador, for immersion in Spanish.
“The graffiti of Ecuador in the early nineties is a phenomenon worthy of a long
discussion, and maybe it is the liberal education I had behind me that prepared me to take advantage of the discovery,” Gill says. The graffiti he transcribed in Ecuador inspired him enough to create a chapbook, The Solution to the Crisis is Revolution, and several articles that were published in literary magazines.
When Gill returned to Ohio, he worked as the public relations and marketing
director for the Beck Center for the Arts in Lakewood. Then it was back to alternative newspapers when he became a staff writer for the Free Times in Cleveland. He moved up to senior editor and eventually to arts editor until the Free Times merged with Scene, another alternative publication, in 2011.
Gill wondered about what to do next until he realized that while Cleveland
had a booming arts industry, there was little to no coverage of it in the media. Thus, along with the director of Zygote Press, he created CAN (Collective Arts Network) Journal. The first publication of CAN Journal came out in June 2012; it is now a successful nonprofit with 85 member organizations and a quarterly print circulation of 10,000 copies.
This past spring, as a member of the Lindsay-Crane Center’s Resource Council,
Gill created a CAN Journal internship opportunity that was filled by Mackenzie Barry ’16, a senior majoring in English and Spanish and minoring in theatre arts.
Gill offers reassurance for any student writer who doubts their ability to find
Photo: Top: Michael Gill Bottom: The
work after college, including myself. And he makes me confident that the education
cover of the fall 2016 issue of his arts
I’m receiving at Hiram College is worthwhile. “I have to say that it takes vision—
journal, CAN.
the ability to see the big picture—that enabled me to create CAN,” Gill said of his accomplishments. “Hiram certainly gets credit for instilling that.” hiram.edu/lindsaycrane 3