Whitworth University

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Necochea, Megan

Whitworth Digital Commons 
Whitworth University 
Script English 
2024 
Lineage with Soft Edges: A Manifesto of Literary Magazines 
Megan Necochea 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.whitworth.edu/script 
This Editorial is brought to you for free and open access by the English at Whitworth University. It has been 
accepted for inclusion in Script by an authorized administrator of Whitworth University. 
Lineage
with Soft
Edges: 
A Manifesto
of Literary
Magazines
Acknowledgements
I am endlessly grateful for the work and support of the Masthead of Script ‘24,
without whom this magazine and this manifesto could not exist.
And for the guidance of Dr. Thom Caraway in the process of producing Script
‘24, and for the creative freedom to take the work of Script that came before me
and to continue in the creation of what is truly a student-run magazine.
And for the support from Dr. D. Berton Emerson in directing this project towards
the mission statement of the Whitworth Honors Program.
And for the contributors to the thirty-fourth issue of Script. The work that fills our
pages is what truly makes this issue special.
And to those who submitted work that we were not able to include in this issue.
There can be no literary magazines without those willing to risk rejection and
submit their work.
The work of a literary journal is never the work of the individual.
Acknowledgements
Masthead
Editors
Emma Moore | Avery Stratton | 
Mira Wibel | Dani Wolf
Editorial Assistants
Bailee Cook | Caleb McGever | 
Melinda Mullet
Faculty Advisors
Dr. Thom Caraway
Dr. D. Berton Emerson
Contributors
Sydney Anderson | Kendall Cavin | Lyra Cupala | Isaac D’Atre | Sage Fosnock |
Ceithlinn Gates | MacKenzie Hewitt | Ally McAfee | Maizie Mendenall | 
Emma Moore | Melinda Mullet | Samuel Ortega | Dylan Pratt | 
Annaclare Splettstoeszer | Michael St. Marie | Jude Ruetschle | Cori Schuman |
AJ Talley | Kate Vaccaro | Elisa Vigil | Elena Vigil | Dani Wolf
hitworth students’ creative work has been published in Script since 1987. In
the years that have passed since then, Script has changed in appearance, 
content, and size, mirroring the ideas of its editors and faculty advisors.
This year, we formed our process and content around the idea of Rebirth. We
sought works that explored the concept of life, death, and rebirth to celebrate
the season in which Script comes into being every year: spring, when allergies
strike and flowers burst from the soil. Behind the scenes, our team has worked
hard to structure the magazine’s organization and processes in such a way that
next year’s team has an easy transition. The editors of a literary magazine should
be able to focus wholly on the creation of something new and exciting rather
than worrying too long about whether the issue will come together.
...
W
S. Eliot, in his final editorial statement for the magazine The Criterion, said
that the end of his time as an editor signaled the end of The Criterion as a T.
whole. The statement, titled “Last Words,” said that “Another man might make
something better of [The Criterion], but he would have to make something very
different” and that therefore “it [would] be far better for someone else to start a 
new review with a new title. New conditions
will very likely require new methods and
somewhat different aims.” It is true that The
Criterion would have changed under a
different editor. However, the very existence of
Script questions the notion that a literary
magazine must be perfectly continuous from
its inception to its final issue. While we suspect
that the final issue of Script sits far in the
future
the very existence of
Script questions the
notion that a literary
magazine must be
perfectly continuous
from its inception to its
final issue.
, the differences between the 1987 issue and the 2024 issue are
remarkable. Our notions of design have changed, the goals of the magazine
staff have changed, and though we only have two more contributors in this issue
than in the 1987 issue, our newest issue is sixty pages longer than its first, bound
differently, and presented differently. The 1987 staff of Script didn’t appear to be
aware of the lineage that would follow; the 2024 staff is intensely aware.
cript changes every year under the hand of its editorial staff. As a literary   
magazine, Script has never truly stayed consistent from one issue to the
next next, or has it existed every single year between its birth and its current re-
created existence. Literary magazines are called ephemeral, shifting, changing. If
this is a key aspect of what it means to be a literary magazine, Script both is and
isn’t a literary magazine, and we want to celebrate both of these things.
T.S. Eliot’s impact on the world of literary criticism and little magazines cannot be
understated, but his work stands at the front end of the existence of literary
magazines. Script is not the only magazine in the world to have a shifting
leadership. Poetry Magazine has been running since 1912, with editors rotating in 
S
If [ephemerality] is a key
aspect of what it means
to be a literary
magazine, Script both is
and isn’t a literary
magazine, and we want
to celebrate both of
these things.
and out of its leadership, and is still perhaps
one of the most influential literary magazines.
The Criterion and the variations on the
magazine that followed were influential in
and of themselves, and the lifespan of a
magazine is typically a short one. The
Criterion was a long standing magazine in
the context of its existence, but it only saw
the beginning of the history of literary
magazines in America, and was unaware of 
what a magazine could be with changing editors and a decades-long lifespan.
Literary magazines in Eliot’s day certainly weren’t the sort of thing that lasted
over a century because there simply wasn’t enough time for them to do so.
Instead, literary magazines were ephemeral publications, lasting at most a
decade or so, then giving way to new publications. This ephemerality, this
impermanence, remains important for the world of literary magazines, which do
appear and vanish quickly. Literary magazines aren’t economically viable things,
and the reason Poetry is able to sustain itself as it is is in part because of a
significant endowment that allows them to publish what they would like without
worrying about finding enough funding to print their monthly issues. Magazines
tied to universities are likewise able to sustain themselves, not by their own
economic
...
economic viability, but by the support from institutions who understand the value
of literary magazines.
In much the same way, Script has been able to continue in publication largely
due to the generosity and interest of individuals. The magazine could not exist
without those who volunteer their time to it, and the guidance of faculty advisors,
like Dr. Thom Caraway, who care enough to ensure that student work has a
designated publication venue, makes this magazine capable of lasting as long as
 the role of Script as a
magazine of the work of
university students is as a
sequential history of what
is literarily valuable at
Whitworth University.
it does. As it stands, a magazine that has
survived since 1987 has a remarkably long life
in the context of most literary magazines.
So, Script rejects Eliot’s notion that editorial
control is what marks the lifetime of a literary
magazine, but in many ways, we also reject 
the notion that literary magazines only exist to be replaced or vanished. True, the
notion of a magazine with multiple issues is that one issue replaces the next,
making earlier issues obsolete. But the role of Script as a magazine of the work
of university students is as a sequential history of what is literarily valuable at
Whitworth University.
...
agazine, from the French magasin, has to do with the idea of a storehouse,
a place where things are kept. And while the collection of back issues of
Script
M
Script in the basement of Westminster Hall may simply look like what a magazine
must do with its extra issues, it is also a physical sign of the years of Whitworth
students who have created art worth putting to print. In the storehouse pages of
Script are years upon years of Whitworth creativity. When I took over editing
Script, I spent time with our back issues to understand better both what Script is
and what it could become.
Literary magazines are often the point where innovation in the world of literature
takes place. T.S. Eliot even said that “the continuity of culture may have to be  
maintained by a very small number of people” often in the form of “the small and
obscure papers and reviews.” While this concept can be used in a way that limits 
accessibility to literary innovation—certainly, while Eliot advanced the Modernist
movement with The Criterion, the magazine was never so radical as to be
considered inclusive—to suggest that obscure works may be the coming face of
the new literary epoch means that Script, as a magazine, wants to uplift the work
of undergraduate students, the new writers and artists, the experimental.
Innovation is an exciting thing, and while Script may never be the face of a
literary movement, it does serve as a key point of witness to a specific time and
place in literary history.
...
e reject the idea that magazines are born to vanish. Instead, in their
ephemerality, magazines are witnesses to the particular context in which W
they exist. One can look at the writings recorded in any
particular issue of Script and gain a better understanding of
what literature meant for students during that time. Magazines
are thought to be like ferns—instead of roots that dig deep into
the soil, ferns are rhizomatic plants, stretching their system
under the soil, likely to pop up in any place, at any moment.
While
We reject
the idea that
magazines
are born to
vanish.
il  Script may not be the magazine that rises to be a key point in the literary 
We want to be
aware of our
place as a
magazine that
documents
world, the publication of student writers brings light to their work, encourages 
them to continue writing, progresses them surely in their
path as creatives until those Script contributors burst from
the soil and grow into key figures of our culture.
T.S. Eliot said that a publication like his review or our
magazine “should be an organ of documentation.” We want 
to be aware of our place as a magazine that documents, that exists for the
display of Whitworth’s creative work. The only way to do so is to sustain this
magazine, so that it is able to document both our particular moment and the
change of Whitworth’s student literature over time. So, the Script editorial goals
for issue thirty-four of the magazine were not just to publish this issue, but to set
up the editorial process for our incoming team of editors. My work as an editor
was tied to the curation of this issue of the Script, certainly, but my work as an
editor in the larger history of other editors was to make the process of publishing 
Script accessible enough that incoming editors only needed to worry about the
literary and stylistic decisions they may want to make. The lineage of Script is one
with soft edges, and my role as its editor was to create support for future editors
while allowing the space for a continued line of creative freedom.
...
n order to understand how to best run and sustain Script, it was and is
necessary to understand who we are as Script. I
We are a literary magazine.
Script is a storehouse of student work, pages that serve to document, a thing that
shifts and changes, yet remains to do its work as a magazine. We are not only a
magazine in the lineage of Whitworth student magazines, but in the larger
picture of the whole history of literary magazines.
We are a storehouse.
Printed on the pages of Script are the words of student writers and the work of
student artists. Care has been taken in the creation and selection of these pieces
as points to preserve in printed form. The variety of forms and content in each
issue is a variety that can be preserved, and in doing so, shed a little light on the
time in which that issue of Script came into being.
We are a history.
As trends of what is and isn’t literary move and shift throughout time, Script is
able to record those changes. Topics and themes change from year to year,
showing what sort of ideas Whitworth’s artists and writers care about.
Additionally, the work chosen to be printed in Script reflects the shifts of editorial
sensibilities, changing aesthetics. The sequential existence of Script allows a
person to understand a piece of Whitworth’s history that doesn’t exist in this form
anywhere else.
We are ephemeral.
Every year, someone new takes the lead on Script and has the chance to reshape
the magazine in their image. This year, we wanted to test the limits of that which 
 
is literary. Last year, every issue of the magazine was bound entirely by hand.
Next year, the magazine will take whatever shape its editor might wish.
We resist ephemerality.
This issue marks the thirty-fourth continuous record of Whitworth’s creative work,
and we hold copies of these issues safely in Westminster Hall. And Script,
regardless of its ever-changing leadership, regardless of the package it comes
in, is always Script. In these pages are a record of what Whitworth students put
forward as the kind of work they are proud of, entering a long-standing history of
Whitworth literature.
We are remaking ourselves.
Every year, Script is reborn into a unique and beautiful existence under the
careful hands of its editors and contributors. This year, we bring an issue that is
aware of its place in the lineage of Script’s and Whitworth English’s histories. We
invite you to dive into the underbelly of Westminster Hall and discover the work of
years and years of our student writers, but also to read these pages and find your
place in this era of Script.
On behalf of the editorial team, I welcome you into Rebirth: the thirty-fourth issue
of Script.
Megan Necochea
Editor-in-Chief
Script ‘24


Lineage with Soft Edges: A Manifesto of Literary Magazines

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