Eastern’s student-run creative arts magazine, The Vehicle, is taking submissions from the Eastern community for the 60th anniversary print issue and new online issue until March 21.

The submissions are open to Eastern employees, students and alumni for visual art, fiction, poetry, drama/plays and creative nonfiction. 

Submissions can be sent to https://thevehicle.submittable.com/submit by March 21.

Colleen Abel, The Vehicle’s advisor and assistant professor of English, said the magazine has been running since 1959 and has published works by authors and students. 

The Vehicle has always been student-run and following COVID-19, it was difficult to publish issues.

“For a long time, The Vehicle was an extracurricular organization,” Abel said. “However, due to COVID, it became too difficult to work on issues and the magazine had to go on hiatus for a couple of years. That’s what makes the return of the magazine so exciting. It’s also the first time we will put out issues since The Vehicle has changed from an extracurricular organization to a course housed in the English department. For the first time, The Vehicle is being taught within the professional writing concentration, as a special topics course in literary publishing. It’s likely that, going forward, The Vehicle will get its own course in permanent rotation in the department, which is awesome.

For the relaunch, The Vehicle is publishing two issues this semester; a 60th anniversary print edition and a new online issue. 

The online issue will focus on submissions from Eastern employees, students and alumni.

The Co-Editor-in-Chiefs of The Vehicle are Maddi Walton and Katie Webb.

There are separate submission boxes on the website for each submission type: drama, poetry, creative nonfiction, art and fiction.

The guidelines for drama submissions are: plays 10 minutes in length, 10-15 pages, formatted as double space and traditional play formatting.

The poetry guidelines include: poems in any style which examine human experiences in new lights, no more than three pages, and submit up to five poems each submitted separately.

The creative nonfiction guidelines are: preferably under 3,000 words, can be creative nonfiction of any kind and formatted in double space 12 point Times New Roman font.

The guidelines for the art submission include: any form of art, maximum to three artworks per artist and formatted as a JPEG with a minimum of 800 to 1000 pixels on the shortest side of the artwork.

The fiction guidelines include: no more than 5,000 words, any genre which showcases stories from Eastern community members and formatted as double spaced as 12 point Times New Roman font.

Madelyn Kidd can be reached at 581-2812 or at mekidd@eiu.edu.