The Motley Club has a new editing staff and advisor, and they are currently taking submissions for poems, short stories, nonfiction, and artwork.
The Motley allows students from any class to submit creative pieces. The Motley crew, made up of six students, takes these submissions, edits them, and creates a book of the students’ work. The Motley Book comes out every Spring.
Senior writing major, Emily Lormand, is the editor-in-chief/president of The Motley. Starting off as an editor, Lormad has been in the program for three years, making next year her final year at the Motley. “There’s not a lot of organizations on campus for creative students. For example, there’s a chess club and a business club, but there aren’t a lot of clubs or programs for creative writing majors. The Motley works with both art and creative writing, which is rare, which makes this program special” said Lormand.
This year at The Motley, there are many new changes. They have a new faculty advisor, Matthew Gervase, who is known on campus as a foreign language teacher. Gervase had a background in creative writing when he was an undergraduate, and he was asked to take this role after the previous faculty member of The Motley left. “I basically help answer any questions and kind of provide the necessary support the students may need, especially at the beginning of the year, to get everything on track,” said Gervase.
Lormand said, “The whole staff is different. Everyone who was involved graduated, so I consider this a fresh start for the Motley.” The Motley Crew strongly encourages students on campus to join the team by supporting Spring Hill’s art and creative writing programs. “Beyond joining the Motley for having it look good on your resume, the Motley is a good way to be active in the arts on campus and seeing the background for a lot of different things,” said Lormand.
The program was also made to create networking among other student artists on campus so they can create and come together. “The Motley connects you with other groups of people, and that’s not always easy to do. If you like to write short stories or even take photos, there are a lot of ways you could get with another group of people who are interested and have your own group of artists on campus” Gervase later added.
The student-led program, the Motley, has a goal this semester of becoming a student haven for creativity on campus and bringing more awareness to Spring Hill’s artistic side.
