The Creative Writing Club released its first issue of this year’s Penchant on November 1st, making it the seventh literary magazine issue to ever be printed. The magazine has only two printed copies: one in the library and one with the officers, however club members plan on printing around 40 issues next year. It can also be found online on the Penchant Literary Magazine facebook page.                                                                                                                                  

The Penchant is a student-made literary magazine containing well-written prose, poetry and pictures created by both club members and non-members. In this issue, all pieces reflect the themes of Autumn and Halloween.

This issue contained various prose from a poem about falling leaves to a short story with chilling monsters to aesthetic pictures depicting scenes in nature.

“I really liked the diversity of writing that we got, and also how many different people submitted.” said layout editor Jaime Wang. “There were some humor pieces, some really serious, and some really depressing pieces. It doesn’t fail to amaze me how good high schoolers can be at writing.”

While the idea for the magazine was presented to the club at the end of September, the actual work started in October, with the club assigning commissions and asking non-club members to submit pieces. With the efforts of the editing and layout commissions, the entire issue was finished in the span of a month, it took around two weeks to receive submitted articles and another two weeks finish the formatting. The deadline for the magazine was pushed back due to a shortage in pieces and extra time time needed for the layout.

“I wanted to provide a platform for people to share and explore their ideas in literature, art and photo.” Yang said. “I know plenty of people that love writing and the arts and are very talented in those fields, but they never really show it.”

The first ever issue of the Penchant came out in 2007-08 and the magazine continued printing for a couple of years, but was later converted into an online magazine after a lack of funding. It was only last year that the club decided to start printing it again after finding a helpful printing company.

The magazine is also facing slight competition from XOOM, a club with an identical aim. XOOM’s magazine covers most of the same topics: art and literature, while also covering politics.

The next issue of the Penchant is set to come out on Dec. 20.