After more than a half-century of publishing Hillsdale students’ creative writing, the Tower Light is celebrating its 60th anniversary with a reunion during homecoming weekend.
Amid the return of many other students and alumni, both the founder of the Tower Light, Rich Hill, and Kjerstin Kauffman ’09, who has her master’s degree in poetry from Johns Hopkins University, will be giving talks during homecoming weekend.
Kauffman will be here with the Visiting Writers Program of the department of English, giving lectures and a reading of her own work.
Tower Light Editor-in-Chief Forester McClatchey has been a part of the literary publication’s production for five semesters, and said that the board is currently emphasizing graphic design and size standardization in an attempt to move toward a more respected position on campus.
“I hope the perception of the Tower Light is constantly improving,” McClatchey said. “I would hope that seeing it as a fixture, a publication with the same logo and a standardized size, would make it seem legitimate and not something to be trifled with.”
Professor of English John Somerville noted that with the absence of a creative writing course in the regular curriculum at Hillsdale, the Tower Light offers students an outlet for serious creative writing.
“It’s a great venue on this campus in which students can publish their work,” Somerville said. “There really is no other place on campus for this. It seems like every issue is its own thing. I’m always interested, even before I begin to read the poems and see the photography, just to note the way it’s been designed. It seems to me that almost every semester, there’s some sort of surprise in the design, and I really like that.”
Faculty Adviser to the Tower Light Maria Servold came up with the idea to sell subscriptions to those outside the campus, so that graduates, parents, and friends can still enjoy the work of students.
“It’s good to have an income source beyond that of just our print costs,” Servold said. “Alumni, parents, and donors read the Collegian, so many might be interested in reading the student work in the Tower Light as well. People pay for both the yearbook and the Collegian, so it makes sense for people to pay for the Tower Light as well.”
Subscriptions are $20 and guarantee both issues of the Tower Light during the year.