This past Friday not one, but two, Manhattan College publications released their 2016 editions as both Manhattan Magazine and Logos celebrated a joint launch party in the Café 1853 atrium.

Manhattan Magazine features student-created poetry, literature and visual art while Logos serves as the college’s liberal arts academic journal.

“It’s a really long process to get these publications to you,” Dominika Wrozynski, Ph.D. said to kick off the launch party packed with contributors, their friends and faculty.

  “It takes a lot of work to put together the party and the publications. The students have worked incredibly hard to make that happen.”

Wrozynski is an assistant professor of English at the college and also serves as the advisor to Manhattan Magazine.

She fittingly began Friday’s event by reading a poem titled “How to Pray” by Barbara Hamby as an invocation and testament to the dedication of all those involved in the often arduous process of creating the two journals.

The launch party is not only the first time the publications are released to the Manhattan College community, but also an opportunity to announce awards given to a select group of students whose works are featured in the two books.

Tim O’Connor, a sophomore marketing student, received The Emmerson Award for Critical Analysis. His examination of comedian George Carlin’s mid 90’s speech delivered to the National Press Club appears this year in Logos—what is now the third annual edition of the journal.

“Professor [Adam] Kohler asked me to be nominated and I said ‘of course.’ That alone I thought was awesome,” O’Connor said. “But when he said it won I really was proud. I want to keep writing.”

Kohler, associate professor of the English department and Cory Blad, associate sociology professor, serve together as co-advisors for Logos.

The Emmerson Awards (named in honor of former Dean of the School of Liberal Arts Rick Emmerson) are reserved for first year students’ compositions. Freshmen year writers are nominated by their professors and winners are honored by being featured in the liberal arts journal as well as receiving a monetary prize.

In addition to O’Connor, Peter Ruimerman was awarded in the category of Personal Narrative while Gabrielle Girgis won in the category of Research.

Similarly, specific creative works were highlighted in Manhattan Magazine for excellence as decided by panels of faculty members.

“As you thumb through the Manhattan Magazine, you see a number of works—beautiful works—paintings, illustrations, ink drawings. It’s quite stunning the amount of work and how it engages the text,” Mark Pottinger, chair of the college’s visual and performing arts department, said when announcing the winner of the visual art award.

Alexandra Frederick’s photograph “East Liberty, Pittsburgh PA” was chosen while photographs from Leah Cordova and Mike Morra were declared Next in Merit.

Although faculty members select the award winners and offer guidance as advisors, the two publications are truly student-driven in terms of content creation, organization, editing and layout.

Junior English major Kieran Rock served this year as the editor-in-chief of Manhattan Magazine while marketing student Taylor Purcell was his counterpart for Logos.

“It was so much fun, I would definitely do it again,” Purcell said on her work as editor-in-chief of the academic journal. “I’m really proud of the way it came out and the changes that we made this year to it.”

Both are supported by a student review board that assists with selecting submissions to include in the final copies, as well as other students who focus on the design and physical layout of the two journals to ensure a high-quality product.

“It’s really exciting to see them when they’re finally done,” Wrozynski said. “As a professional writer, nothing gives me greater pleasure than to see students’ work in this form.”

Those in attendance on Friday also had the opportunity of not just getting to see and read submissions, but also to hear some of the selections from the twenty-sixth edition of Manhattan Magazine read aloud.

Egan Award winners Angela Benevenia, Krystal Diaz and Rocio Reyes Mejia read excerpts from their fiction, poetry and non-fiction pieces respectively.

As the audience members listened or read along with rapt attention, it became clear that 2016 proved to be another successful year for the two Manhattan College publications.

Editor’s Note: Kieran Rock is both Features and a Managing Editor of The Quadrangle and was therefore not interviewed for this article.