The Portal Class Speaks at VIU’s Arts and Humanities Colloquium

VIU’s final Arts and Humanities Colloquium talk of the academic year will be on March 22 at 10:00am in the Malaspina Theatre. Media Studies professor Joy Gugeler and current and former Portalers will present their talk entitled “Time Travelling through the Portal: The Evolution and Issues of a National Literary Magazine,”  a how-to meets walk-down-memory-lane. They will share how a black-and-white photocopied and stapled chapbook for a publishing class went from this early incarnation to a 96-page, full-colour, nationally distributed literary magazine on newsstands and online. In response to the shifting publishing landscape and the ambitions of the 20 students in the class over the last 15 years, Portal has developed a monthly reading series, a national contest, an innovative online and social media presence, a spotlight on writers from other cultures, podcast and print interviews with award-winning writers, and a celebration of graduates with new books. In an age demanding authenticity, how does a print magazine respond to its evolving readership and answer the call for inclusivity, decolonization, and representation with more than just intention? How do words that transport also reflect our times as we travel through the portal of our most intimate and artistic ideas onto the page?