The Quarry Literary Magazine has announced the theme of their fall Amplify Zine titled “Intersectionality,” and is accepting submissions of a wide range of art pieces from Oct. 13 to 24. The Amplify Zine was created to highlight underrepresented student voices on campus. Like the spring magazine, all St. Olaf students are welcome to contribute.
The Amplify Zine has centered multilingual, transgender, international, first-generation, and BIPOC student art over the past few years. Past editions can be viewed on the Quarry website under “Zine Archive.”
“The fall Amplify Zine is, and always has been, focused on uplifting voices that you don’t normally hear, or [that] get sidelined in society,” Quarry Arts Editor Luke Jeschke ’28 said in an interview with The Olaf Messenger.
The Quarry is entering its 103rd publication year with two main publications — the fall Amplify Zine and the spring Literary and Fine Arts Magazine. The spring magazine has been central to the work of the Quarry and is their largest publication. Alongside their zines and spring magazine, the team recently hosted their first curatorial show, which highlighted featured art in an exhibition.
In an interview with The Olaf Messenger, when asked about the goal of the intersectionality theme this fall, Quarry Arts Editor Ellie Glenn ’27 said, “We want to showcase intersectional identities — parts of our identities often mix, and the mixture influences how we experience the world around us. We want to explore how art can reflect these experiences and different identities.”
Quarry Executive Editor Angeline Domeyer ’26 recalled in an interview with The Olaf Messenger the reaction to the theme after announcing it at the Quarry Fall Mixer: “I think people were kind of surprised because it doesn’t exactly follow what we’ve done in the past, and [it] offered lots of excitement and energy for them.”
This year, the theme is particularly open to a wide range of perspectives.
“Hopefully, when people hear the theme, they want to dig up pieces they’ve written about how… their identities intersect, or write something new about their experiences,” Jeschke said.
Each year, the Quarry editing team brainstorms the theme of the Amplify Zine together, considering and searching for what feels right for the current societal moment.
“This year, we wanted to do an alternate take,” Domeyer said. “Identity is hard to fit into distinct categories, and art can often represent those experiences that are otherwise hard to express. The identities artists choose to honor [are] up to them.”
The Quarry executive team looks forward to submission season, as it’s the time they get to see all the “beautiful art that Oles make on campus,” Glenn said.
“We are looking for St. Olaf students to speak their truth,” Jeschke said. “If you are a St. Olaf student and you like writing, this is the publication for you — submit to Amplify!”
The submissions form will be accessible through the Quarry email alias, other creative spaces on campus, and a link on the Quarry website.
