By Jordan Gaudreau
Applying to graduate school can be scary. Each school has different requirements and world-views which can make creating your curriculum vitae (CV) almost impossible.
One of the best ways to improve your chances at getting into a great graduate school is to publish your writing in a peer-reviewed journal. Luckily, Laurentian University has its very own literary journal titled Sulphur.
Sulphur offers yearly submissions in order to help soon-to-be graduate students start their career on the right foot.
The peer-edited periodical has been running for over 5 years and has published the work of over 100 students.
Steve Brown, the current editor in chief of Sulphur is “looking to publish mostly short stories, essays and poetry pieces.”
“Last year we had a lot of poetry and not a lot of stories.” He said. “This year, we are going to try to even out the number of stories, poetry and literary essays”.
The format for publishing in Sulphur is loose but here are some general tips to help ensure your piece gets picked!
Keep your piece less than 20 pages:
It’s important to make sure that each of your publication submissions are less than 20 pages. If a story, essay or poem goes longer than this page limit, it enters a different category of publication and can take away from the work of others.
Edit, Edit, Edit:
Looking over your submission a few times can definitely be helpful in catching some grammatical errors but having a friend look over it can help catch any weird sounding sentences or vague arguments.
If the editing process is especially difficult for you, Laurentian University has a Centre for Academic Excellence located on the second floor of the library.
By booking an appointment, you can have a professional editor look over your submission piece to help strengthen it.
Write for yourself, not for the journal:
Choosing a topic to write about can sometimes be a problem. For this submission, don’t worry about the topic, focus more on the content. Choose to write about anything that interests you.
Sulphur will accept any submission regardless of topic as long as it interesting to read. Write about your interests, not what you think Sulphur will want to receive.
Sulphur will be accepting publication requests until February 14th, 2020. To submit your work to the peer reviewed journal and boost your CV, contact Steve Brown at eas@laurentian.ca.