Five Years In, Kreps Lit Mag Still Holding Its Own Alongside High School Publications

Red Ink, the literary magazine from the students at the , has been ranked “excellent” for the fourth year in a row by the National Council of Teachers of English.

It all started five years ago, when Kreps language arts teacher Rich Christiano noticed talented writers don’t get the same recognition as their peers whose gifts lie in more noticeable fields.

“I started the magazine because I noticed a certain kind of student at Kreps doesn't get recognition,” he said. “Sports teams win trophies. I noticed there are kids who're really strong writers who don't really get anything.

“Writers crave one thing most of all: they want to be read,” he continued. “To work so hard on their writing, to make it the best it possibly can be and not have it read by anyone but their teacher, seemed like a shame to me. I started the magazine for those kids.”

What began as a project for his eighth-grade students grew and grew as their friends heard about it, until he finally had to start a club for all the interested students in the school, who are in grades six through eight.

One year after getting things off the ground, Christiano said he decided to submit the magazine to the National Council of Teachers of English's competition. But only a few middle schools submit their work, as the contest is mostly for high schools.

“That was indeed a thorn in our side,” Christiano said. “It just never seemed fair to me because I can think of no other sport or real after-school activity where 12-year-olds compete against 18-year-ols. That's fair by no one's definition.”

But despite the very high level of competition, Red Ink was named “excellent” that year, and every year since.  “That’s when I stopped complaining,” Christiano said.

The Board of Education at its Monday meeting for Red Ink's latest high ranking, this time for the 2010 edition of the magazine.

The annual publication usually runs about 60 pages a year, with writing from the entire school and artwork and layout by the student staff. Christiano said he tries to stick to the literal definition of his role as faculty advisor, giving students advice on how to run things but not doing the work for them. Thanks to student fundraising efforts each year, the magazine is kept to the price of $1, and students sell it to members of the school community at the end of each year.

Because students run the magazine, some very personal stories can come through. Christiano described a piece in last year’s edition, whose theme was "Time," in which a boy wrote about his very personal struggles.

“Last year we had a kid who wrote a gripping, visceral personal essay about his experiences with a disability that he had,” Christiano said. “He suffered from a number of things, including clinical depression, and his essay about it was so moving and so precisely worded.”

The student, who chose to remain anonymous in the publication, described the challenges and bullying he had faced, Christiano explained.

“It turned out to be a personal triumph for this kid, who was suicidal,” he said. “He had overcome it, gone for therapy, and was kind of walking his own way to success by composing his thoughts and writing them down on paper. It moved me and the rest of the English teachers tremendously; it was very well received. I'd never seen anything like it before. It had never occurred to me a middle school student would use a literary magazine in that way, such a personal and profound one.”

This year’s magazine, whose theme is “Seeing the World Through Different Eyes,” is still in production. The awards aren’t the focus of the lit mag, but Christiano said they do lend a certain something.

“There are other schools that do as well as we do—most don't—but for us to be higher-ranked than many high schools is something I treasure,” he said.

For more on Red Ink, visit www.redinkmagazine.net.