Genesis Magazine Celebrates 50th Anniversary

Genesis Magazine recently celebrated their 50th anniversary, releasing their latest issue on Wednesday.

"Genesis magazine is a student run and student directed literary and art magazine within the School of Liberal Arts, so we publish undergraduate and graduate student work" said managing editor Kelsey Hawkins.

Jacob Stewart

Genesis Magazine Release Party

Any IUPUI students are welcome to submit original work for the chance to be published.

The celebration was open to all IUPUI students, faculty and alumni. Those in attendance included current and past editors and contributors. Two of the founding editors of the magazine, which was established in 1973, were also in attendance. Those that attended enjoyed drinks and refreshments, as well as readings by contributors of their works and a mystery book raffle.

"It was extra exciting this semester because we got twice as many submissions as usual, so we were able to publish a lot more work than we normally do," said Zoe Hanquier, another managing editor.

Professor Sarah Layden has been faculty advisor for genesis magazine since 2016. The magazine has changed shapes both literally and figuratively during Layden's time at genesis.

Abigail Freestone, Zoe Hanquier and Kelsey Hawkins, Managing Editors of Genesis Magazine

"They tend to gravitate towards genre fiction, but we have become more diverse in some of our content that we publish," Layden said. "We have a more vocal LGBTQ population on our campus which I think is reflected in our magazine."

Besides publishing student work for 50 years, genesis is also celebrating some of their latest achievements.

"We also work with the Hoosier writing project, to produce these scholastic anthologies for art and writing for Central and Southern Indiana, so we just produced and gave to award winners the 2022 anthology," Hawkins said. "Last year a few of our pieces also received an Indiana Collegiate Press Association Award."

Next year, the graduating managing editors will have to hand over the reins, but they appreciated being able to rejoice at this final celebration for all the hard work they have put in over the years for the magazine.

"...Writing the history took a whole bunch of research," said Hanquier. "So it was really amazing to make an issue, not just having the work of current students, but the culminating work of the last 50 years."

Hanquier is sad to be leaving genesis, but she looks forward to pursuing graduate studies. Hawkins, on the other hand, was recently accepted into the graduate program at IUPUI, and is excited to be able to see what the magazine will accomplish.

"I think it is incredible that we joined what we thought was this small thing, and turns out it took 50 years to get where we are," said Hawkins. "We're honored to carry on a legacy that so many people put so much hard work into. And since we're graduating we're excited to pass on that legacy to other people, and hopefully see in the future how it adapts and evolves from there."

Jacob Stewart is a sophomore and has been writing for The Campus Citizen since October of 2021. He still doesn't know the journalist code of ethics by heart, but that's okay, because he's not a real journalist. He's just a neuroscience major with too much free time.

Genesis Magazine Celebrates 50th Anniversary

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