The Chautauqua journal has been a part of the literary landscape at the Institution for many years.
As a new vision is eyed for the journal, Chautauqua Literary Arts leadership wants to celebrate the journal, and its leadership, in a pivotal summer for the publication.
At 5:30 p.m. tonight in the ballroom of the Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall, the public is invited — though space is limited — to “Celebrating a Legacy: The Chautauqua Journal & Anthology.”
Since 2007, Jill Gerard, along with her late husband, Phillip, has overseen the production of Chautauqua as co-editors.
The year they began as co-editors, they partnered with the Chautauqua Writers’ Center, then celebrating its 20th year.
With that confluence, they used Chautauqua’s four pillars to frame the journal’s sections.
That practice became tradition, and every year saw a new edition of Chautauqua, which was published through the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, where undergraduate and graduate students gain experience in the publishing world by overseeing and managing Chautauqua’s annual publication. The students are in charge of reading over 300 submissions per reading period, putting them in order, deciding which section they belonged in, and brainstorming themes.
“This book has an incredible amount of work that goes into it, but it’s certainly not celebrated or elevated in the way it should be,” said Stephine Hunt, manager of literary arts. “The dreamers like Jill and Phillip who have maintained this for so many years, had a dream that this could be something bigger like an anthology.”
An anthology is, indeed, the next chapter for the Chautauqua literary journal, co-edited by Jill Gerard and Kwame Alexander, the Michael I. Rudell Artistic Director of Literary Arts and Inaugural Writer-in-Residence at the Institution.
This summer will be the last literary journal as it currently exists, and the first Chautauqua Anthology will be published in 2025.
Alexander’s decision of turning the journal into an anthology is meant to — with the work of Gerard and the UNC-Wilmington students — enhance and embolden the existing journal’s impact, Hunt said, leaning on his connections in the publishing world.
Under the Gerards’ leadership, the journal has always held Chautauqua’s pillars and values at its heart, including imparting it to students in their UNC-Wilmington classrooms.
“We made sure that everyone on the staff, even if they had not ever heard of, or ever been to Chautauqua, got a feeling for it,” Gerard said. “… We talked a lot about the four pillars and the mission of Chautauqua and the integrity of having honest conversations. And so that was part of how we just worked in class, too.”
