Odyssey ranked superior by NCTE

Courtesy+of+creative+writing+class.

Courtesy of creative writing class.

Azul Lin, Reporter

After submitting their magazine, Odyssey, back in July of 2019, the staff has finally received recognition for their skills in late January. This edition was worked on by editors Emily Breach, Jasmin Loomis, Payton Bellman, and Amy Shreeve, who were seniors that have graduated by now.
This year, Odyssey received a Superior for the Recognizing Excellence in Art and Literary Magazines (REALM) Award, judged by the National Council of Teachers of English.
“We were Excellent the year before, so we’re moving up the ranks.” Bree Rolfe, the Odyssey Faculty Advisor, said.
Rolfe has been in charge of the Odyssey for three years, but Bowie has had a literary magazine since its founding. Ever since she has taken over the magazine, she has been sending it to competitions for review.
“I worked on the literary magazine when I was in high school and I really enjoyed it,” Rolfe said. “We have so many talented artists and photographers and writers in this school I thought it would be nice for them to have a way to showcase what they’re doing.”
The Odyssey is a literary magazine produced primarily by the Creative Writing class.
“It’s a bunch of poems and short stories and essays compiled all together. We try to base it around a theme, it was the Five Senses [last year].” senior editor Rio Galo said.
Even if you’re not in Creative Writing, you can still submit pieces to be put into the Odyssey.
“If you’re in Creative Writing, the class, 1 or 2, what happened with me is that I just wrote a story, and she took it ‘cause she liked it, and she just asked me to, like, edit it a little more, and I put it into the magazine,” Elias said. “For students that don’t have her, you just get her contact info, just send her any story you want or poem and she’ll look over it and then if she likes it she’ll tell you to edit it and then you just talk to her about it a lot.”
Although Rolfe doesn’t have a formal process for choosing writing editors, she picks them based on strong writing skills, motivation, and leadership skills. This year’s editors were writers in last year’s magazine.
“I wanted to become an editor because I like the sense of community we get from working on [the magazine], I think it’d be really fun and I can find a passion through it.” senior editor Emma Elias said.
With the positive response over last year’s magazine, this year’s staff is working hard in order to aim for an even higher ranking for the next competition.
“[The theme’s] gonna be the Four Elements, so earth, wind, fire, water. We want to improve every single year.” Galo said.
Creative Writing is a good choice for juniors or seniors that like writing or might want to contribute to the Odyssey magazine.
“I know there’s a lot of classes that are writing based, but they’re more specific,” Elias said. “I knew creative writing would be a lot more open, and I can be creative in any way I wanted. I just took the chance and now I love the class.”