The Vehicle literary magazine is celebrating its 50th anniversary.

A special reading for the anniversary will be part of the Celebration: A Festival of the Arts at 3 p.m. Saturday in the Black Box Theatre of the Doudna Fine Arts Center.

This event will be free and open to the public.

“We are doing a special reading,” said Letitia Moffitt, The Vehicle adviser. “We will have faculty and students who have submitted things in the past do readings from the past five decades. Since it is the 50th anniversary of The Vehicle, we will have a special display and commemorative poster as well.”

Some of the readers are former Eastern faculty, who are former advisers to The Vehicle.

Student writers who have been published in the spring 2009 issue of The Vehicle will read some of their poetry and prose as well and six winners of the 2008-2009 Vehicle awards will read their pieces, which are four poems and two prose pieces.

The event will end with the winners of the first James K. Johnson Creative Writing Award, Daniel Paquin and Anthony Travis Shoot, reading their work.

Paquin will be reading a prose piece and Shoot will be reading a collection of five poems.

Any Eastern student can submit work to the magazine.

“We are hoping for people to come and learn about it,” Moffitt said.

Moffitt said students will enjoy the displays and can see how the styles of the magazine have changed.

“In the ’70s, there were a lot of war poems,” Moffitt said. “Sometimes, the magazine had black and white art, sometimes it more humorous covers and sometimes it had more serious, artistic covers.”

Moffitt said the quality of the writing stayed the same over the past 50 years, though.

“We hope to have it going for another 50 years,” she said. “Plus, students should not only want to see the history, but also the present and future of the magazine.”

Rebecca Griffith, editor of The Vehicle, said the reading should also give the audience a sense of how the publication has evolved throughout the past five decades.

There will also be a 50th anniversary issue, which will be the first issue printed with a spine in contrast with the glossy magazine, newsprint or stapled binding in the past. “There wasn’t really enough time to run as many features as we might have liked to, though,” Griffith said.

Griffith said the first issue of The Vehicle was printed in 1959 and the editor was Fred Miller.

“The editors of The Vehicle seem to have been a diverse bunch, all with a lot of personality,” Griffith said. “All of The Vehicle’s editors seem to have taken a lot of pride in the journal, whether they saw working with The Vehicle as an opportunity to satirize, to build up writers or to encourage student writers.

“That pride and dedication to the journal from the students who have worked with it is the one thing I don’t think has changed over the past fifty years.”

The Vehicle has had its shares of ups and downs.

In 1977, the Apportionment Board of Student Government cut The Vehicle from its funds.

“They had no interest in a literary magazine at all and thought student fees were useless,” said John David Reed, professor emeritus of the department of journalism. “They thought they could strike the magazine from student fees. At that time, they didn’t see the importance in literature in today’s society.”

The English department and the vice president of academic affairs at the time backed up the magazine, which was not a publication at the time.

The English department gave some money in 1977 to back the publication because of a written petition and and ever since then, members of Sigma Tau Delta, the English honors society, have overseen the journal.

Furthermore, in 1991, all student publications, including The Vehicle, were separated from Apportionment Board.

Five Decades of The Vehicle speakers:

Duangrudi Suksang, ’60s

Debra Valentino, ’70s

Dana Ringuette, ’80s

Letitia Moffitt, ’90s

Sue Songer, ’00s

2008-2009 Vehicle Award Winners

Amanda Veale, “Dining at the Mortuary” (Best Overall)

Mary Lieske, “Motivation” (First Place Prose)

Dan Davis, “Guitar Man” (Third Place Prose)

Jake Dawson, “Hop Scotch Bebop” (First Place Poetry)

Anthony Travis Shoot, “Spring” (Second Place Poetry)

Sarah Fairchild, “Trumpet” (Third Place Poetry)

Spring 2009 Vehicle Authors.

Stephen Garcia, “True Nature,” “The Prestige,” “Ermine Drive”

Jennifer O’Neil, “Angry Moon,” “Sad Moon”

Miranda White, “Hate for One”

Josh Boykin, “The Churning,” “The Old Boat Dock,” “The Remedy”

Samantha Sottosanto, “Introduction”

Justin Sudkamp, “What About Love,” “Moonglow Memories,” “Haiku 1,” “Scarlet on the Wind”

Grace Lawrence (read by Ashley Wright), “Divine Insanity,” “Slow Motion”

Gretchen Schaible, “Blood”

Kellen Fasnacht, “Untitled, for Courtney,” “Haunted”

Keith Stewart, “A Cheap Metaphor is What We Have for Death”

Brittany Morgan, “Dirty Tears,” “Connected”

Christie Cheatle, “Perfect”

Mary Lieske, “Summer Vacation”

Kristi Kohlenberg, “Dear God”

Rashelle McNair, “Illuminated,” “Immobile”

Aaron Dillon, “Guarded”

Justine Fitton, “Idyllic Has an End”

Kimberly Hunter-Perkins, “Lightning Rod,” “The Habits of Husbands,” “Epistle to a Bombshell”

James K. Johnson Creative Writing Award Winners, reading works published in The Vehicle

Anthony Travis Shoot, “We Swim Wearing Armor,” “Empty Things,” “On the Street Where I Live,” “Divorce,” “Pressing Matters”

Danny Paquin, “Twig”

Heather Holm can be reached at 581-7942 or haholm@eiu.edu.

The Vehicle, Eastern’s literary magazine, will be celebrating it’s 50th anniversary with a reading during Celebration at 3 p.m. Saturday in the Black Box Theatre of the Doudna Fine Arts Center. (Erin Matheny/The Daily Eastern News)

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