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At the club fair in January, there were many clubs looking to recruit new members in Center Court, including Jabberwocky, which is rebooting after being out of operation since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Before the pandemic, Jabberwocky was Aragon’s arts and literature magazine, which would compile submissions of student writing and art into a bi-annual magazine to be shared on campus. After a semester of in-person school, Jabberwocky decided to restart.
“I knew about it freshman year but did not join,” said junior and Jabberwocky Vice President Angelina Parker. ”This year, in the creative writing class, I got inspired and wanted to restart it.”
The idea of Jabberwocky was started 25 years ago, and it has been kept alive by the efforts of the club’s current adviser and creative writing teacher, Genevieve Thurtle.
“Angelina Parker approached me and asked if Jabberwocky was still happening or in existence, and I said that I wasn’t sure so I touched base with [Ms. Huebsch],” Thurtle said. “She told me … she was looking for a new adviser, … so I offered to take that position.”
“We’re accepting … literature, poems, creative writing, essays, … sculpture, music and dance”
Jabberwocky has a long history here at Aragon. Before the pandemic, English teacher Robynne Huebsch was the publication’s adviser for several years.
“It was … difficult to get in contact [with students] and hard to get it out to students [during distance learning],” said senior and Jabberwocky Treasurer V Tolmasoff.
Thurtle also agrees that the pandemic put Jabberwocky in a difficult position.
“When the pandemic hit, it kind of fell by the wayside because it was [nearly] impossible to keep it going,” Thurtle said.
But the hiatus has come to an end, because Jabberwocky is officially restarting and pivoting to an online magazine rather than print one.
“We’re accepting all forms of art from literature, poems, creative writing [and] essays, to art, sculpture, music and dance,” Parker said.
“We have so many students who are talented in many different forms of art expression”
The online platform allows new formats of art and writing to enter the Jabberwocky scene, and the officers are hoping that a more diverse range of mediums and a more open platform will make Jabberwocky grow.
“We have so many students who are talented in many different forms of art expression,” Thurtle said. “We have brilliant dancers and musicians and writers and visual artists, but there isn’t a single place for their work to be displayed. I feel like we are offering sort of an index for that, to showcase the talent that we have here on campus, and that is very exciting to me.”
Those who are interested in displaying their work in the Jabberwocky magazine can submit work to bit.ly/jabberwockyahs. Jabberwocky will be accepting work all year, and its first issue will come out in March.
“I know that [submitting work] is very nerve wracking and [it] makes you feel very vulnerable to put your art out into the world,” Thurtle said. “But it’s an amazing feeling to see your art connect to another human being. It’s a form of communication, whatever the genre is, and that to me is one of the pleasures of producing writing or … any kind of artistic expression; that gesture of communication and connection to other people.”
The Jabberwocky Club plans to release its online magazine cover by March.
