Letter From the Editors (Summer 2020 Edition)
Cover image by Featured Artist Madison Gasper The 2020 Summer Edition of The Watershed Journal is a product of a particularly challenging time. Globally, the pandemic made choices that used…
The System is Broken: Using Dissonance to Engage an Audience
Engaging and engrossing writing can be simple or complicated, but never flat. Just as in real life, we can incorporate adversity and differences, rather than avoid them, in order to build a system that feels real and moves our readers. Even when our goal is to find patterns, draw conclusions or describe a beautiful future, our stories are more powerful when we consider the exceptions to the rules we create. Introducing dissonance into our writing invites our readers to bring themselves into the story and empowers them to take our narratives personally.
What is The Watershed Journal’s Magazine Publishing Process?
Each magazine cycle starts with a one-month submissions period. During this time, writers, poets, photographers and artists email their work to thewatershedjournal@gmail.com in order to be considered for the next edition. There is never a charge to submit to the Journal. As we collect, track and share the submissions within our production staff, we market across platforms to reach as many local storytellers as we can.
Why Storytelling Won’t Die
The very act of telling stories can be transformative. Both storytellers and listeners are given a chance to indirectly disclose themselves. They experience and reveal beliefs and opinions that might otherwise be too uncomfortable to share.
New Edition is Out Now!
The newest issue of The Watershed Journal is full of all-new stories, poetry, photography and artwork from the western Pennsylvania Wilds and is available now on our website!
Spring 2020 Letter from the Editors
It has been an honor to work with all the homegrown submissions we received. Inside this newest magazine you’ll find a greater variety of subjects than we’ve seen in the past. Beautiful odes to nature pave the way for stories of hope, as well as heartbreaking words on loss and change. We were challenged and inspired while creating this collection and hope that you, the reader, enjoy the same immersive experience.
Keep TWJ Authentic: Submit Your Work!
Our submitters are one big reason why we have been so successful. Our readers are another. There is a hunger in our region for better representation than what is currently available from the media. We have opted for authenticity, diversity and honesty. In a literary world obsessed with superlatives, wanting to know who is better than whom, we instead have chosen to focus on what is real and uplift the voices in our area in truth.
Membership – Making a Huge Difference for Our Literary Magazine
Now here we are again, planning for another full year of extremely local literary excitement. So much has changed and grown since we began. What has not changed is our passion for regional voices. We will continue to publish quarterly in 2020, as well as provide our quarterly Workshops and other events. However, we have a mind for growth and are working on some very exciting opportunities and literary initiatives in the next year.
Why Expose Your Work to an Audience?
There is a golden moment in writer’s meetings that I both dread and relish, every time. It’s that few seconds after you have finished reading your work, just before you look up from the page. You are filled with elation. What was conceived as an idea and hatched in a battle of words has now discovered flight. Your story is your secret no longer; it has left the nest and taken on a life of its own.
Discovering Originality
Our communities are not always sure of how to handle original writing. While some groundbreaking works are taught to middle schoolers, others are burned or banned. While some writers are hailed as saviors of humanity, others are excommunicated or censored (or worse). Those who toe the line of social norms and challenge society to question their pillars are not only risking being misunderstood, they are asking their readers to take a risk as well.