By Francesca Mayr ’16

Lively, innovative, and unhindered by arbitrary conventions, Arcadia’s literary party-goers took the mic at the Pulp zine launch party in the Castle Rose Room Oct. 11. The event sparked interest in the publication, which is sponsored by the Writing Center and designed to provide an outlet for creative writers to share their work with an attentive audience.

Do not turn to the little, orange booklet in search of analytic essays, critical arguments or technical writing. Pulp is home to creative writing only, ally to unbridled creativity and questioning spirits.

“We want the magazine to be a place for creativity, not that creativity can’t happen in analytical writing, but we feel that students need a place to showcase the flash fiction they’ve been working on or the poem they are proud of,” said Sarah Kwiecien, one of the zine’s editors. Pulp’s willingness to publish longer stories in separate issues, serializing stories in the style of original pulp magazines of the 30s and 40s. Both the zine and the open mic night are meant to showcase work that previously could not reach an audience.

“We are smaller than a typical literary magazine and hope to provide a more raw approach to writing,” said Kwiecien. “At Pulp we are about the writing process. We encourage students to submit, but we also encourage work-shopping pieces and refining the writing craft.”  The publication shares the Writing Center’s mission “to create better writers, not better writing.”

The open mic night proved so successful—more than 30 people attended and presented nearly two hours worth of creative writing—that the zine plans to continue the open mic nights every month, corresponding with the release of a new Pulp issue.