By MaggieMorris

Marian offers numerous extracurricular activities for students to get involved in outside of their regular classes. These include athletic teams, campus ministry groups and school-related clubs like World Language Club, Young Medicine Club and Art Club. Many girls are also involved in student publications. Some do it for academic and dual college credit, like yearbook and newspaper, but others are involved in an extracurricular publication, the school’s literary arts magazine, BURN. 

BURN is published once every semester. It contains photography, artwork of different mediums and writing/poetry. All of these works come directly from the students in an open submission process. This fall, 133 submissions of creative genius were considered. In the end 31 works of art and 27 works of poetry were selected for the fall issue.

A group of 36 students from the sophomore, junior and senior classes meet once a week to put these works onto pages and make the magazine come to life. In recent years, digital media has become increasingly important in all aspects of life. There has been a BURN magazine website for many years, but this year a new digital team was added to the staff. 

The new digital team focuses on updating the website and editing the archive of old issues. Junior Eva Kreiner, one of the co-editors of this year’s digital team, explains that the team also uploads interviews with artists, honorable mention awards and music submissions from students. 

Since the digital BURN team is a recent development, Kreiner said that the most difficult part of working on it is “figuring out how to work with the website,” as well as “how to completely change the layout of the website.” Many of the girls on the team are unfamiliar with the WordPress system of creating and updating the website, making it challenging to take on this new task. “Getting team members to all be on the same page” has also been an obstacle for co-editors like Kreiner.  Kreiner has greatly enjoyed being a member of the BURN staff, and her favorite part is “being able to see everyone’s art and see that everyone is creative in their own way.” She feels that you can truly “learn more about a person through their artwork.” 

The magazine is a great way for students to showcase their talents and be appreciated for their work. There are several national awards each year for literary magazines. In November, the cover art of the Spring 2022 issue, created by senior Ceci Urbanski, received fifth place in the “2022 Design of the Year-Literary/Specialty Magazine Cover” category for the National Scholastic Press Association. 

The cover of the Fall 2021 issue received an honorable mention in this category, for its artwork created by junior Scarlett Wharton, and its design and layout, made by seniors Elizabeth Foreman and Kate Hoppe. 

Wharton’s piece depicts a drawing of an eye with colorful strokes surrounding it. She says she really enjoys painting eyes because they “reflect a lot and show emotion.” Wharton was surprised by the honorable mention but felt that it was a “pretty big deal” and said her mom is very proud of her. She is also a BURN staff member this year and being on BURN has made her realize “how much work goes into each spread.” She enjoys the way that Foreman and Hoppe worked with her piece to bring everything together.