Agora

Agora is Belmont Abbey College’s student literary magazine, published yearly during spring semester. A call for submissions of poetry, short fiction, graphic art, and photography goes out yearly to the entire Belmont Abbey community and a student board of editors decides what works will be published. Prizes are also awarded for the best submission in the categories of written work (poetry and stories) and art (graphic art and photography). The winners are determined by Agora’s student editors.

Over the school year, the Agora staff also holds several “Poetry, Song, and Story Evenings” open to the entire Belmont Abbey community to come and share favorite or original poems, stories, and songs. These gatherings are open to all in the college community who would like to come as audience or as sharers, and while we try to work up a loose schedule, the mike is open. Students who would like to participate in any aspect of Agora should contact:

Faculty moderator:
Dr. Joshua Hren
joshuahren@bac.edu

Do you want to be a part of something great? Do you want to be a part of creating art? Do you want to be a part of the artistic pulse of Belmont Abbey College? Then the Agora team is right for you!

Involvement in Agora is pedagogically rich: students organize and host events, taking responsibility for setting up and cleaning up afterwards. Students learn oral skills and gain self-confidence in self-presentation: serving as MC’s for events, reading works of poetry, fiction, and non-literary works aloud and doing so well, and performing musical pieces publicly. Students read all submissions, meet twice a week over several weeks to discuss and analyze each one, evaluate all submissions for awards and possible publication, edit selected works for grammar and usage, plan layout, consider and evaluate works of art and photography for publication, select a cover design, and work closely with the faculty advisor and the copy-editor for final editing as we near publication—all within a limited amount of time to finish by a strict deadline. Students also respond to submitters, file and organize submissions, and learn to take and maintain a professional stance in how they represent the artistic and literary standards Agora seeks to promote and hold. Agora also exemplifies our Benedictine hallmark of “community” as it is non-exclusive: Students involved work alongside students from across the classes—freshman to senior—and across the disciplines. They also have a lot of fun.

To learn more about us, come see us at the Crusader Involvement Fair, attend one of our events, or contact us at agora@bac.edu.

A special thanks to our submitters, past design-editors Jillian Maisano and Renae Heustess, and our current design-editor Michelle Harrison.