The Collegio Pittsburg's student voice since 1916
Caleb Oswell photo editor
The Midwest Quarterly is looking for authors interested in submitted academic essays, poetry, and other literature to run in their issues next year.
The journal is Pittsburg State University’s only interdisciplinary journal. It doesn’t fall under any division, program or department. The quarterly has been coming out four times a year since 1959. The journal is international, and all the articles are hosted on international databases such as ProQuest and EBSCO. Academic writers from all disciplines are encouraged to submit ideas for the journal’s upcoming issues. Casie Hermansson has been working on the journal since 2015 and is now the editor-in-chief of the Midwest Quarterly.
“Since its inception, the Midwest quarterly has given a privileged launchpad to PSU authors,” Hermansson said. “But, we actually have authors that send us submissions from all over the world. So, in the past couple of years we’ve published authors from Hong Kong, Nigeria, and Europe. So, they come from anywhere.”
Graduate students interested in getting involved with the Midwest Quarterly can submit their essays with a cover sheet before March 1 for the Graduate Best Essay Award. The award is given out every year with a $500 cash prize. Two other awards are also given out. Those awards are the Stephen Meats Poetry Award and the Victor J. Emmett, Jr., Memorial Award for essays on any literary topic.
“Every year we have outstanding entries,” Hermansson said. “I would love for more students to know about that because although the Graduate Office sends out bulk e-mail reminders and we try to let faculty of graduate classes know about the competition, really it’s down to the students who need to be motivated to just fill out a cover sheet that can be found on the graduate studies website. There is $500 every year, we’ve only, had a maximum of seven entries. That’s the highest number, so the odds are pretty good if students are willing to just take that effort.”
The articles are peer reviewed by readers across varying fields. Most of the issues published by the journal are open interdisciplinary, however the journal occasionally runs special issues.
“There are free copies of this journal available at this library and we put them there after every quarterly is published,” Hermansson said. “So, students are welcome to pick up and peruse copies. Also, while it’s more difficult for undergraduates to pass the peer review process when it comes to academic entries, apart from the graduate best essay, we often have an open submission process for poetry. So, if a student is interested in submitting then they will go through the same process of vetting that any other author would.”
Often, the summer issue of the journal is poetry only, but the journal may also run special issues on occasions such as the Midwest Quarterly’s 60th anniversary.
“I would say one of the things that interests me still and that I’m very proud of is the ability to launch PSU authors, as well as other people who are early in their academic careers from anywhere, but the ability to give them a global bullhorn to talk about their research area,” Hermansson said.