By Alana McCarthy Light
“Art has been often underemphasized, not just in education, but in a cultural landscape too. Our goal is to put a focus on art students make and make that important,” said JJ Gnahoua, the president of MC Rockville’s literary magazine.
Gnahoua explained this further when they sat with me in a hallway outside a classroom. Inside, staff from The Red Jacket literary magazine were filming a promotional commercial. JJ Gnahoua majors in General Studies with a focus on American Sign Language and film.
According to Gnahoua, in contrast to creative disciplines like art, “STEM is considered professional work or focused on more seriously.” The student-run and student-curated publication “amplifies” creative voices on campus.
The Red Jacket invites all MC students to submit their fiction, poetry, personal essays, photography, digital art, paintings, sculptures, and other creative forms to the magazine’s email. Their deadline to send artwork to the magazine is February 15, 2025.
VA Mussie, the magazine’s vice president and a music major, advised that “if you have [a creative project] that you’ve been sitting on for a month, a year, two years, or three years and so on, you should get on it. Easier said than done. If your schedule is not allowing you to do what supposedly makes you the happiest, then you should change your schedule and make that the priority.”
Part of the English and Reading Department, The Red Jacket meetings have transformed this semester into an affinity group of creatives. Previously, meetings consisted of editors making most decisions for the publication.
Gnahoua noted the commercial for Instagram “being filmed right now [is by] people who are not editors that don’t get anything to do this. But they want to because of their passion for the magazine.”
The two students’ abundance of additional ambitions for projects and events for The Red Jacket displayed their forward-looking motivations for the literary magazine. They both discussed their goals of hosting zine tutorials, having open studios, and creating a campus zine library featuring The Red Jacket’s archive.
“A goal that we’ve had for specifically this semester is trying to get the artists at MC to start talking and interacting with each other more. I feel we could have more events [because] to really build a community, you need to have a consistent get together, have a workshop, or collage, or just a meeting where people can work on art together. Other people who are creatively likeminded can work alongside and get feedback,” Mussie stated.
During my visit, the group made collages as part of a vision board for creating the magazine’s table of contents. Ultimately, the publishing process will have many complexities including the formatting and printing, and students will work on all of it.
The Red Jacket generally releases their magazine to the public and throws a launch party every April. Contributors receive the opportunity to read and discuss their work over refreshments.
Montgomery College Rockville Campus has had a literary magazine since the late 1960s. Culture and means of information sharing have shifted radically since and so has The Red Jacket. Back issues of the magazine can be found on MC’s website in PDF format or around campus in print.
In the 2022 and 2023 editions, seeing my work printed on the magazine’s pages made me feel connected, encouraged, and inspired. I encourage all readers to find spaces to elevate their voices, as doing the same has kept me sane. If you are an artist attending Montgomery College, consider sending your creative projects to The Red Jacket before February 15, 2025.
If interested, please send all your submissions for The Red Jacket to: [email protected]
For more on the magazine, including links to its previous versions, please visit: https://www.montgomerycollege.edu/academics/departments/english-reading-rockville/red-jacket.html
