The Malden High School Literary Society’s The Oracle is the second-oldest literary magazine published by high school students in the country. With a long history of celebrating creative work in print, the magazine continues its tradition this year as it recently opened up submissions for both students and staff to publish their works.
The Oracle’s submission deadline is April 14th, 2023, with a maximum of five works per person. It accepts all forms of visual art, “whether it’s prose, poetry, essays, drawings, paintings, sculpture, performance,” or the like, stated Ray McKenzie, advisor of the Literary Society. He believes that it is an “excellent opportunity for creators to share their work with a wider audience” since “creators need to expose themselves to life, to experiences, and to the creative works of others in order to grow and be inspired to continue creating.”
One submitter, junior Tyler Edmond, echoed this sentiment: “It’s fantastic overall for The Oracle to highlight student creativity since it allows other students the chance to experiment and benefit from one another's knowledge.”
And for some who may fear the idea of sharing their creative works directly with others, submitting them to The Oracle is an ideal way to indirectly do so as these works will instead be credited and published in print in this year’s magazine edition, then sold to students and staff. Senior President and editor-in-chief Emma Martinez emphasized that “it is definitely so much easier when you don’t need to literally face the people you are submitting to.”
In the last few years, Martinez expressed that The Oracle felt some repercussions from the pandemic, which included “irregular” publishing despite being published annually in the past. Now, the literary magazine hopes to rebound. “We think it’s important now more than ever to keep up with publication,” she emphasized, “especially after being the second-oldest literary magazine in the country.”
Although last year, the literary magazine received too few submissions to be put into print, McKenzie confirmed that those submissions will be honored in a feature for this year’s edition. As for this year, submission rates have been looking up so far with some students already submitting their creative works.
Edmond’s submission was a photograph that captured the local scenery many people typically pass by without notice: one of the sunset on the Malden River taken from an orange line train on Wellington Bridge. Despite the seeming simplicity of the scene, he found that the “sunset that glistened in the water looked so lovely that I had to capture it.”
Junior Tern Pierre Rene also submitted a scenic photograph, but one taken hundreds of miles from Malden and in the Adirondack region in New York. Pierre Rene voiced that as it was taken during a “huge adjustment period for me, I feel that its murkiness represented that…[and] I feel like it captured my feelings perfectly.”
She also enjoyed overall that the submissions gave students the “opportunity to share their creative work because I get to see so many different perspectives.”
Edmond, Pierre Rene, and other students and staff’s creative works can, once again, be seen in The Oracle’s magazine edition for this year, which may be expected to release at the beginning of May.
And as for now, both students and staff are highly encouraged to submit their creative works to The Oracle to support its longstanding tradition, which can be done after scanning the QR code below:
