Seven UTRGV students and Gallery staff members has won eight awards from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association’s 36th Golden Circle Awards.
Gallery is an annual literary and arts magazine that seeks to expose the hidden talents of UTRGV students. The magazine, which began in 1979 at the University of Texas-Pan American, is student-based and funded. Students taking the ENGL-3350 course make up the Gallery staff.
Staff members are in charge of selecting students’ literary and artistic material, editing and publishing the work.
“The students submit the work to the magazine, and then we publish the magazine, and from that magazine, we send in some of our favorites to the association,” said Britt Haraway, Gallery adviser and a creative writing professor at UTRGV.
He said it is nice for students to get recognition outside the university.
“I think anytime we can acknowledge students’ success that way, we’re doing them a service and sort of building community, even outside the [Rio Grande Valley],” Haraway said. “To feel that positive feedback, I think, is gonna help the students keep producing, keep doing it.”
The Columbia Scholastic Press Association is an international student press organization founded in 1925 at Columbia University in New York City.
This year, college students from across the United States submitted 5,309 yearbook and digital media entries in 91 categories and 7,187 news and magazine entries in 86 categories, according to cspa.columbia.edu. The awards were announced on Oct. 4.
“I feel like Gallery is the best, like, starting point, the best steppingstone that you can take. … It’s a great place for you to start,” said Dora Cantu, Gallery’s editor-in-chief and an English and Mexican American Studies senior. “The amount of talent that we have here at the university is just insane and is so badly underrated and overlooked. Like, a lot of people don’t know that we have so many amazing artists and poets and writers. I just feel like a lot of people need to learn more about [students’ talents].”
In total, there were 747 winners for yearbook and digital media and 807 winners for news and magazines who received first, second, or third place or a Certificate of Merit for honorable mention in a certain category.
The UTRGV winners are as follows:
–Lourdes Navarrete, first place in Portfolio of Illustration and second place in Single Illustration: computer-generated with “Lioness”;
–Amanda Peña, third place in Experimental Fiction for “Diary of a Poor-Dry Back”;
–Jason Garcia and Cara Ortiz, third place in Cover Design for Literary or Literary Art Magazine;
–Pamela Torres received a Certificate of Merit for Portfolio of Illustration and Single Illustration: Hand-Drawn with “Shelter in the Water”;
–Aylin Villagomez received a Certificate of Merit for Single Illustration: Computer-Generated with “Translucent”; and
–Camilo Garza received a Certificate of Merit for Photo Illustration with “The Fates.”
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