{"id":11705,"date":"2026-03-03T17:55:04","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T17:55:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/?page_id=11705"},"modified":"2026-03-03T17:55:04","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T17:55:04","slug":"taking-a-trip-to-the-moon-with-prof-woodwards-literary-publishing-class","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/home-2\/the-words-february-26\/taking-a-trip-to-the-moon-with-prof-woodwards-literary-publishing-class\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking A Trip to the Moon with Prof. Woodward\u2019s Literary Publishing Class"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Daniel Graham ’26<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Professor Steven Woodward\u2019s Literary Publishing class has one rule: it won\u2019t say \u2018no\u2019 to anything. You want to make a cover design based on tarot cards? Sounds good. You want to do illustrations? Go for it. You want to write a letter begging your class to include your letter in the anthology? Let\u2019s find a way to sneak that in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On February 4th, the Fall 2025 class unveiled its latest iteration, A Trip to the Moon<\/em>, at its release party during that week\u2019s English and Creative Writing Coffee House. Students and faculty alike crammed into Old Main 400 to eat Moon Pies and hear from the students behind the book.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\"Prof.<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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The publishing world is full of rejection, but Prof. Woodward offers students a kinder, more creative introduction to the industry. He started teaching Literary Publishing back in 2019. At first, he taught the course as a straight-up primer on the literary publishing world, but in 2022, he took a new approach: let students publish their own anthology. And let them lead the process. From start to finish, from cover design to content to typesetting to promotion, the students are in control. And thanks to the department\u2019s Critchett Fund, they get a professionally printed product in the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It started with MoonSprout: A Literary Garden<\/em><\/a> in Fall 2022. Future classes adopted that title to make \u201cMoonSprout Publishing\u201d the name of their little company, signified by the miniscule figure at the bottom of the spine with a sprout for a head. In 2023, the anthology was Sketches of a Body: Faulty Projections<\/em><\/a>, then 2024 was The Orchard: A Prose and Poetry Anthology<\/em><\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A Trip to the Moon<\/em> went through the same democratic process as the others. After students compiled their written works, they worked in four different groups to create cover concepts, then voted on the best one. Maren Stewart-Tanner 028 designed the moon tarot card theme that ended up as the final cover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I met with my cover design team, we pretty quickly decided we wanted to do some sort of digital collage,\u201d Stewart-Tanner said. \u201cSo, the cover that it now has is a collage of physical art pieces. We have a watercolor piece for the background, two sketches that were then digitized for the wolf and the spider, and then a moon that was drawn on paper and then scanned into the computer.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Students divided themselves into groups to work on different aspects of production, like typesetting, cover design, and public relations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe course is designed to give you a taste of all of the different things that you could do,\u201d Prof. Woodward said. \u201cBecause it’s just one semester, you have to move really quickly \u2026 You get exposure to a lot of different things, but then you have to go and explore a lot more to really discover, \u2018Okay, here’s the things that I like.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The course isn\u2019t just about the labor of publishing, though. Prof. Woodward is very well-connected in the industry, and he leveraged those connections to give his students meaningful experiences in the literary world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe had a lot of class field trips,\u201d Carmen De Souza Bronshteyn \u201926 said. \u201cLike to the Twin Cities Book Fair, which is an event that’s been around forever, and I’m from here, but I’ve never experienced [that] before. And [we got] to see Ocean Vuong\u2019s reading. And [we] have a professor who is just in it, and involved for so long, it was really cool learning about it behind-the-scenes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fall semester was Prof. Woodward\u2019s last at Macalester. He\u2019s now working a full-time gig at Normandale Community College. The course that started before him will continue after him, though \u2014 he has made sure of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cIt’s a little bittersweet,\u201d Prof. Woodward said. \u201cAll endings are. But I think the great thing about it is that the anthology was just always meant to be something that students could take and turn into a vehicle for things that they wanted to do. And so, hopefully, the class continues to be that type of thing where people come in and they say, \u2018Here’s what I’ve been doing. Here are the things that I’m interested in. Here are the directions that I would like to take my interest in publishing\u2019 \u2014 and that will still exist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd even if they quit doing anthologies, the class is still an opportunity for people to be able to do that,\u201d Prof. Woodward continued. \u201cAnd to understand publishing is really less about having to do things in a very specific way than it is about taking what you already like and are interested in and adding that to the world of books.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Thank you to Prof. Woodward for teaching the Literary Publishing class for six years and producing four Anthologies! The English and Creative Writing department will miss you. Best of luck on your next chapter!<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Daniel Graham ’26 Professor Steven Woodward\u2019s Literary Publishing class has one rule: it won\u2019t say \u2018no\u2019 to anything. You want to make a cover design based on tarot cards? Sounds good. You want to do illustrations? Go for it. You want to write a letter begging your class to include your letter in the […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1193,"featured_media":0,"parent":11823,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-11705","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1193"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11705"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11839,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11705\/revisions\/11839"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}