Toyon celebrates the release of their 65th issue
It has a sky-blue cover with a thick strip of yellow across the top of it that reads Toyon, the ‘Movement Issue’ is out. The publication released their 65th issue with a large celebration accompanying it in the Kate Buchanan room.
For those unaware, Toyon is an English literature magazine that relies heavily on students submitting original work. They have the ability to submit short stories, poetry and anything that falls within that realm of writing.
This is an opportunity to be taken full advantage of since many other magazines charge their writers to have their work published as Deanna Abate said. Abate is a senior majoring in English and has been working with Toyon for two semesters now.
Abate said that something that differentiates this issue with all others is that they as a staff did not clearly define the topic to their writers, they let them define it for themselves.
“We told people it was the migration issue,” Abate said. “And then people submitted their work based on how they defined migration.”
Unlike the rest of the publications on campus, this publication only publishes once an academic year. They receive submissions up until a certain point and while that is going on their editors work tirelessly to edit everything to utmost perfection.
In the 65 issues they have released, the idea came about to start commemorating the past and future issues other than someone just hoarding them in a musty closet.
As the archive editor, Hannah Hosqisson scans all of the older versions of this magazine and then works with HSU’s special collections to upload it to their website so it’s available for anyone to see.
By doing this anyone anywhere can access older or newer versions from the website. Hosqisson is also an English major in her senior year and picked up the task of archiving from the previous archive editor.
Since Toyon has been around since 1954, there is a lot of work to be done to archive everything but it’s worth it according to Hosqisson. Aside from archiving she has also helped them out with their spoken word.
“We did outreach events and held a couple of events last semester,” Hosqisson said.
Toyon’s issue is full of stories and content in various genres and in particular, this issue was more diverse than usual Hosqisson mentioned. While event-goers perused the newest issue and munched on some finger foods that were being served, Linda K, was behind the swag table giving out freebees. This table was filled with items that you would figure, some mini notebooks, pens, bookmarkers and the always important – stickers.
However, in addition to all of those goodies they also handed out packets of seeds. Originally they were going to give out those simplistic silicon band bracelets, but the staff came together and agreed that wildflower seeds were more ergonomic.
“We thought planting wildflowers, attracting bees, butterflies and birds was a good thing,” K said.
They not only hosted an event to celebrate the various voices written about in the recent issue and the hard work put into it, but they pulled in environmental consciousness too.
“Let’s do something that actually helps the environment,” K said.
