A huge thank you to all those who came out to the Spring Writer’s Event & Leonardo Release Party on April 11th! The turnout was huge, and we at Leonardo immensely appreciate all those who showed up to show their support for the magazine, the student readers published within, and Benjamin Garcia, our guest speaker for the event this year. We were all truly honored to see how large the turnout was
A special thanks especially to our student readers who appeared to showcase their work:
Gray Pendell Jones, reading “Hell is Real”.
Davina Purnell, reading “Honored New Mexico Elder”.
Catrina Mejia-Chavez, exhibiting Fallen Angel Study.
Sage Reader, playing “Cookie’s Jacket” & “Egg & Squash Sandwich”.
This Spring, Leonardo as a magazine was transformed. From beginnings as a saddle-stitched zine, we expanded our scope and ambitions this year to produce a perfect-bound, 58-page undergraduate student literary magazine. With the time available to six student editors attending Leonardo as a credit-bearing Honors class, we made leaps and bounds to change our process, switching from Microsoft Word to Adobe Illustrator and dipping our toes into a stylized layout and bold graphic design, themed around “Cluttercore” and “Rebranding”.
With 31 total submissions accepted, we thus made the “Visionary Edition” of Leonardo. A small nod to the authors, poets, artists, musicians, and so forth, who work tirelessly to envision an artistic project and nurse it to fruition with love, care, and no small amount of effort. We are honored to have received as many submissions as we did, and honored to have been hosted at the Spring Writer’s Event to showcase the gamble we took with the magazine.
Of course, we have many to thank as well!
Thank you to Rebecca Aronson, who helped facilitate the Spring Writer’s Event and helped us find the space to exhibit Leonardo and the student readers listed above.
Thank you to Carly Harschlip, who previously facilitated Leonardo and is anticipated to return, giving us as a team the foundation we needed to work through the semester.
Thank you to Chris Prentice, who was a driving force behind Leonardo being listed as a credit-bearing Honors class this year.
Thank you to Tiffany Tomchak and Marley Jameson-Sisneros, who also helped organize the event at CNM’s Main Library.
Thank you to ECOS (Executive Council of Students) for supporting our journey in seeking a new printer.
Thank you, especially, Rebecca Maher of Starline Printing, who helped us review our work along the way and made sure it would be ready for print, and who also showed us much about the process itself.
And additional thanks to Michael Chavez of TLCc, the CNM Marketing and Communications Office, the Suncat Times and CNM Chronicle, Amaris Ketcham of the UNM Honors College, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Without their guidance, we wouldn’t have been able to achieve what we have this semester.
Thank you as well to Benjamin Garcia, who came to CNM to read some absolutely beautiful poetry, and implored us to write what we want, from our hearts, without discrimination.
You can find Benjamin Garcia’s book of poetry, Thrown in the Throat, here at Milkweed Editions.
And, finally, a thank you to our Facilitator, Jessica Mills, who instructed the class and helped make this possible. We all learned together through this, stepped up, and helped each other in one concentrated collaborative effort. To put it simply: It was beautiful. So, I also thank my fellow student editors, Heather Gunn, Fiona Page, Candice Clark, Shakkri Ortega, and Davina Purnell for the experience.
We highly anticipate what next years round of student editors will do with Leonardo, as well.
Sincere Best,
Maria Pearson, Webmaster & Fiction Editor
& The Leonardo Student Editing Team
Leonardo Magazine 