Getting Literal With Katarina!
ACP’s 2020-2021 Literary Magazine has been published! The student-created magazine is 100% digital and can be accessed by scanning the bar code or clicking here. It contains artwork, photos, written pieces such as short stories and poems so you will be sure to find something right up your alley. To learn more about behind the scenes for this year’s lit mag, I spoke with Katarina Marceta, writer and creator! Presenting: Katarina Marceta!
Q: What inspired you to join ACP’s Literary Magazine?
A: I joined Lit Mag for the first time last semester; I’ve always been interested in anything that has to do with writing, editing, and reading. Considering I’m already the editor-in-chief of The Knight Times, I decided to try something new, which quickly manifested into the form of literary magazine.
Q: How long did the 2020-2021 literary magazine take to create?
A: Lit Mag takes the entire year: we start writing articles and gathering photos at the beginning of the year. Because of COVID, we were set back a couple of months but we successfully pulled everything together. Alex Lee, the Vice President of the club, and I started to put it together at the beginning of April after asking students to submit their own art pieces and stories. We spent half an hour trying to pick a name for it, which consisted of us scrolling through lists of Latin terms and phrases; we finally chose Voces Pulchrae, which means “beautiful voices”. After several technical difficulties and last minute edits, it was officially published last week on Thursday.
Q: Which is your favorite piece in the 2020-2021 literary magazine?
A: I feel like it’d be very self-centered of me to say my own article, so I won’t. I really enjoyed Elise Jimenez’s poem “Piece of Me”; in fact, all of our stories and pieces are outrageously phenomenal and well-written.
Q: What was your favorite moment while creating this magazine?
A: Downloading the final product. After a few glitches with Adobe Acrobat, PDF files and Google Drive, downloading the “second” official copy felt like a huge relief. However, the moment we figured out what our cover picture was going to be was thrilling. Our cover, a picture taken by me in Croatia in 2017, was found by accident. Alex and Mrs. Patterson loved it so we used it as the front page.
Q: Could you tell me a bit about the piece that you published in the magazine?
A: I wrote a travel piece on the city of Belgrade, one of the oldest and lesser-known cities in Europe. I’ve been there what feels like a million times to visit family and friends. My aspirations are to become a travel journalist one day, so I thought I’d practice a little with our school’s literary magazine and write about a city I’m very familiar with. I love Belgrade and bringing a little bit attention to it, even if its through a school magazine, makes me happy.
Q: What should Knights look forward to seeing in this edition of literary magazine?
A: A lot of student-entries! Most of our magazine consists of pieces not written by students in the Lit Mag Club, and a lot of them fit in more with the creative writing area rather than technical writing. We’ve also featured many different photos, taken by Mrs. Patterson, Alex, or me, art pieces sent in by Ms. Hillier, and, not to mention, scattered quotes and allusion to Oscar Wilde, the father of aestheticism.
Q: What type of beverage do you resonate with?
A: Sparkling water because I like the bubbles like the fish from Nemo.
Thank you Katarina for taking time out of your day to answer some of my questions. I, and the rest of the Knight family, appreciate all the work you put into this edition’s literary magazine. I really enjoyed reading the literary magazine and recommend it to all. Don’t forget to strive for the impossible, be extraordinary, and read the literary magazine!