Writers, who like to exceed past the classroom but still gain learning experience and recognition are urged to publish a piece in Wright State’s Fogdog Review. The Fogdog Review publishes student essays about literature, popular culture and film and has been doing so since 1997.
“The Fogdog Review is a literary journal that publishes student essays.” Heather Wies, former Fogdog Editor, said. “We strive to highlight exceptional writing at Wright State and to encourage students that they too can engage critically with a text, rather than leave that work up to ‘professional’ critics. The Fogdog Review is really a special privilege. It gives students the opportunity to display their hard work and talent, along with showing them that they have something important and meaningful to contribute to the critical discussion.”
According to www.wright.edu/fogdog, the Fogdog Review was established in March 1997 by faculty member Annette Oxindine and English majors Brady Allen, Michael Gallagher, Cynthia Marshall and Kimberly Wells. Both Brady and Cynthia are now lecturers in WSU’s Department of English.
Recently, the Fogdog celebrated its 15-year anniversary. Free copies of the Review are available at the fourth-floor lounge and the Department of English in Millett Hall. In order to be published in the Fogdog Review, students must have been enrolled in at least one course at WSU within the past two years.
Submissions for the 2013 issue are being accepted.
“Each semester, Dr. Oxindine sends an email to all English majors asking for submissions from the previous semester (or quarter),” Wies said. “After receiving the submissions, Dr. Oxidnine assigns a number to each submission to protect the writer’s anonymity. Then, the student editors read and evaluate the submissions. We rate the essays on a four-point scale, ranging from definitely yes to definitely no.”
“The meetings where we share our evaluations tend to be lively and amusing, especially when the group is split down the middle about a given submission,” Weis said. “It’s fun to try to convenience the other editors that a submission warrants acceptance or rejection. After the submission process is over, the editing begins. The accepted essays are divided into two groups and two to three editors are assigned to each group. Many a lively debate over whether to use a comma or a dash are had during the editing process.”
According to Weis the difficult part of being a part of the Fogdog review was the editing.
“I love to read the literary analysis that we choose to publish, and I genuinely enjoy editing each essay,” Weis said. “Some essays, however, are much more difficult to edit than others and it can be a long and tedious process to attempt to edit an essay without changing the author’s original intention.”
The Fogdog is unique and important to the WSU community, not only for English majors but all students in general.
“Fogdog impacts the WSU community by providing a model for students,” Weis said. “It is often difficult for students to enter the critical discussion, especially when the critics’ essays seem so esoteric and mysterious, but this engagement with the critics is a requirement for many upper level English classes. The Fogdog Review serves as a model for students because it displays exemplary work from other students at WSU, which provides encouragement that if the published students can enter the critical discussion successfully, so can those who are struggling with doing so.”
