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Reading to feature Persona contributors

Undergraduate contributors to the student literature and arts magazine Persona will have the opportunity to present their work tonight in a reading hosted by the UA Poetry Center.

The 2000 issue of Persona will be distributed to the public in the next coming weeks and will for the first time include video and CD-ROM works in the magazine. It also features the standard mediums of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and visual arts, including photography, painting and lithography.

"We wanted to start a move toward including more art. Dance, performance and music was discussed, but we decided video would be our step," said English and creative writing junior Margaret Adcock, one of the Persona editors.

The selected video submissions - two short films, each about five minutes in length - will be screened at the reading, using the projection equipment available in the Modern Languages Auditorium where the reading will be held.

Co-editor Kellie Rife said the magazine will print 12 stills from each of the films. She added that of the two contributions, one will have explanatory text that will run along side the images.

Although film is a new medium for Persona, and only one of the seven staff members has a media arts background, Adcock said the editorial staff felt as capable of judging film as they would be for any other medium.

"We all pretty much felt confident in our abilities to be relatively educated ... as judges of things," she said.

Adcock said the editors of Persona looked for uniqueness when selecting a submission for print.

"We looked for stuff that was original, stuff that wasn't boring," she said.

As a result, the magazine's 20 literature pieces and 24 visual arts works reflect the "wide range" of works Rife said the editors were aiming for.

The reading - as well as the approaching publication of the magazine - will be the culmination of an extensive collaborative effort by undergraduates to promote the work of other undergraduates.

All of the contributors were invited to present their work - each allotted five minutes to read their soon-to-be published poems, as well as other work and a brief biography. As of yesterday, a tentative 12 had agreed to read.

The reading is tomorrow at 8 p.m. at Modern Languages 350. Persona editors said the publication date of the magazine is indefinite, but it is usually distributed in the first week of May.

Graig Uhlin can be reached at catalyst@wildcat.arizona.edu.