McCallum’s literary magazine gets a makeover with a new adviser and a fresh staff

McCallum is a school known for its arts and talented students. With that being said, it seems appropriate for there to be some way to put the spotlight on those students who are known for their talents or prefer to stay anonymous but still show what they have to offer. This is where McCallum’s literary magazine, Excalibur, comes into play.

“Excalibur really embodies McCallum’s voice and the students in it and it’s a platform for McCallum students whether they’re an artist or a writer or musician to really put themselves out there in a way others can see,” sophomore Isabella Hernandez said. “It’s just a really expressive magazine and open to anyone.”

Hernandez is the chief of content for the magazine and a first-year staff member. After hearing about Excalibur as a freshman, she wanted to get involved.

“I would see all these little Excalibur things that would promote Coffeehouse and I would always hear about it,” Hernandez said. “It sounded so cool to me that McCallum had its own magazine and I just thought that the process of making it would be so much fun. I love to see how a lot of McCallum people put their own self expression into what they make and I was intrigued by that part of it.”

Excalibur’s process started with an event called Chalk it Up where students could go during lunch and write with chalk and listen to live music performed by a student. This event helped to promote the magazine and the other promotional event that Excalibur’s staff puts on called Coffeehouse which was held on Feb 17. Coffeehouse is held twice a year in the library and students can audition to perform while other students come and watch. Other than marketing, there is also a large process of putting the work-in-progress together to create a final product.

“It’s more of a sequential process so it goes marketing, content and then design,” senior Ella Speer said. “Marketing obviously advertises Excalibur, gets people to submit, makes posters, and sets up Coffeehouse which is a big part of getting submissions and helping our budget. After that, submissions go to content and content reviews all of the pieces we get and accepts what goes in the magazine and then from content, submissions go to design and they put together the magazine using InDesign to make it pretty.”

Ella Speer is the supervising chief and has been doing Excalibur for two years. She looks over all of the categories and makes sure everything is going smoothly during the process. This year Speer says that they are trying to create a new tone for the magazine because there is a new teacher and new ideas.

“Susman had been doing Excalibur for 10 years I think so he had a hold on it and he knew what he was doing as far as budgeting and stuff goes but since it’s mostly a student-run class anyway it’s not too different and it’s really interesting seeing the different ideas Myer’s has,” Speer said. “It’s not too hard of a transition considering it’s a student-run class.”

If you would like to submit to be featured in Excalibur, you can submit any original art, writing, music, and other creative work to the submissions box in the library or send it to [email protected].