High school literary magazines: What do I need to know?

October 21, 2013 1:14 PM

I'm going to be doing on-site critiques of high school literary magazines at an upcoming conference. I've worked as a reader and editor for several literary journals; what do I need to know about high school publications?

Any particular journals I should look at that everyone agrees are good, or that all of the students I'll be meeting would be familiar with?

And in general, any insights for how to make the time as useful as possible for the students would be great. I don't really have any teaching experience to speak of, outside of some work with smaller kids and some TA-ing in grad school.

Thanks.

posted by roll truck roll to Writing & Language (4 answers total)

I bet looking at journals that got high praise at previous years of the conference would give you an idea of what kinds of things to look for. I know when I worked on my high school literary magazine we really had no idea what other schools did, only what we had done in the past (it varied a lot) and what looked cool.
posted by rustcellar at 2:19 PM on October 21, 2013

Best answer: NCTE and NSPA both have awards for best high school lit mag. You can check past winners to see what works and what doesn't.
posted by mattbucher at 2:31 PM on October 21, 2013

I was the editor-in-chief of my school's lit mag, and to be honest I also wasn't familiar at all with anything other schools had done.
posted by kylej at 6:56 AM on October 22, 2013

Response by poster: Thanks, everyone. The conference was great.
posted by roll truck roll at 3:33 PM on November 21, 2013