By: Sydney Herdle ~
We are delighted to announce that, for the first time, editors of Klio will be attending the annual FUSE conference at Cabrini University in Radnor, PA. The conference runs from November 2nd-4th this year and includes lectures, readings, and workshops for student editors of literary magazines.
via FUSE website
FUSE, which stands for Forum for Undergraduate Student Editors, is a national organization that connects student editors and writers from universities across the country, such as UCLA in California, Bowling Green in Ohio, and SUNY-Geneseo in New York. The ultimate goal of the forum is “to improve channels of communication between editors of undergraduate literary magazines and to foster discussion on the improvement of the undergraduate literary community,” according to the FUSE website.
The theme of this year’s conference is “Representation and Resistance,” which aligns with what we, at Klio, are attempting to focus on for this year’s creative arts journal. The guest presenter at the conference is Martin Espada, a political activist and Latino poet who currently teaches poetry at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and has won many awards, including an American Book Award and Paterson Poetry Prize.
Espada will give a reading of his work the first night of the FUSE conference, and host a workshop entitled “Poetry of Political Satire in the Age of Trump” on the following day.
In addition to attending the lectures, readings, and workshops at, Klio editors will also present a workshop that circumferences the ways in which we are striving to make Klio a more inclusive and open magazine.
Below is the proposal for our workshop that was accepted by FUSE:
We represent Klio, the online sister of Penn State’s undergraduate literary magazine Kalliope. Although Klio is a young creative arts journal, we are working to become a medium where students of all nations, faces, races and backgrounds are welcome to express themselves and have their voice heard. We have opened our submissions to not only students at our main University Park campus, but students at the other 19 Penn State commonwealth campuses as well; we have added a task to one of our teams to include international student outreach so we can hear voices from all over the world; and we have done numerous other things to help Klio become as inclusive as possible. What we intend to do during our 30-minute editorial and publication process workshop at FUSE is share these ways we have become more inclusive and discuss the different forms of representation needed for a magazine to call itself all-inclusive.
We are very excited to be attending FUSE 2017 and hope the knowledge we take home with us ignites a spark in Klio’s curation!