The Cross­ings Gives Stu­dents Cre­ative Writ­ing Op­por­tu­ni­ties

MISHAWAKA—What is one of the most im­por­tant as­pects that stu­dents can gain from go­ing to col­lege? Is it ex­pe­ri­ence? The Cross­ings of­fers just that for any stu­dents in­ter­ested in get­ting their writ­ing pub­lished.  

Emily Oliver said, “The Cross­ings is a lit­er­ary mag­a­zine, and we pub­lish vi­sual and lit­er­ary arts. We have cat­e­gories for drama, fic­tion, non-fic­tion, po­etry, and re­cently we added book re­views as well. There are many pro­jects we have go­ing on, but we are mainly fo­cused on pub­lish­ing cre­ative writ­ing and art pieces by Bethel stu­dents.” 

Any­one is wel­come to sub­mit their writ­ing to The Cross­ings. They must send the cre­ative writ­ing piece through email to cross­ings@bethelu­ni­ver­sity.edu . The Cross­ings also does a prompt of the week where they post a writ­ing prompt and stu­dents are given one week to write a short piece about that prompt. The pieces are sub­mit­ted to be pub­lished and a win­ner for the week is cho­sen and en­tered to win a $30 gift card for Barnes and No­ble at the end of the se­mes­ter. 

All the pub­lished pieces are ac­ces­si­ble on The Cross­ings web­site, along with the weekly prompts, and in­for­ma­tion about The Cross­ings. There is a to­tal of eight peo­ple on their staff right now, most of which are stu­dents. The pro­fes­sor who over­looks The Cross­ings is Jen Ochstein.  

The Cross­ings is a plat­form for stu­dents to get the ex­pe­ri­ence of get­ting their works pub­lished and is a great thing to be able to put on a re­sume. It is eas­ier for one to get pub­lished if they have even a lit­tle ex­pe­ri­ence with it, as that is what many pub­lish­ers look for. Along with ex­pe­ri­ence, The Cross­ings pro­vides an ex­cel­lent cre­ative space for stu­dents who just need to ex­press or tap into their cre­ative side.