THE COPPER QUILL
The Literary Magazine of HACC, Central Pennsylvania's Community College
Welcome to The Copper Quill, the first fully online literary magazine for HACC, Central Pennsylvania's Community College! Founded in 2021, The Copper Quill features work from talented students across all 5 HACC campuses. We publish art, photography, poetry, and short works of prose (fiction and nonfiction). See our submission guidelines above, and don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions.
Welcome Back!
Welcome back to the Copper Quill! In this edition, we bring you a selection of poetry and creative nonfiction penned by HACC’s students and some photography by our very own editors and advisors. Thanks for joining us for the March 2023 Edition of the Copper Quill!
Join Flash Fiction 118 This Summer!
Check out Professor Greene’s Flash Fiction 118 information below.
We hope to see some of your flash fiction pieces in our upcoming Summer Issue!
Flash Fiction Ad 23.pdfWHAT IS FLASH FICTION?
Flash fiction has a few definitions, but it always means very, very short stories - usually stories of 1,000 words or less, and often as short as 500 or 100 words!
WHAT CAN FLASH FICTION DO FOR YOU?
Flash fiction is the easiest way to get published!
Literary magazines can only publish so many traditional 4-6k word short stories per issue, but they have more space for flash fiction
Flash fiction is especially popular with online literary magazines because it better fits the online ecology and the expected attention span
Writing flash fiction will help with all kinds of writing!
Flash fiction will teach you how to write more efficiently and compactly and how to use negative space (what is left unsaid, what is implied) to your advantage
Flash fiction is hip and trendy!
Flash fiction is a great place to experiment!
You won't want to play with time, or with point-of-view, or with taking big risks in the novel you've been working on for years, so the Very Short Story gives you a little laboratory to play with new writing strategies, try them on, and see how you like them
Click Here for Professor Matthew Greene's introductory video!
CALL FOR CREATIVE NON-FICTION
We are very interested in creative non-fiction pieces, especially those that deal with the realities facing HACC students; those realities include dealing with financial aid, working, emotional and psychological challenges, and social justice issues such as racism or climate change. Pieces should be 2,000 words or less.
NaNoWriMo.
FROM THE ADVISOR’S DESK: November is National Novel Writing Month, where writers are encouraged to write 50,000 words in 30 days. We at The Copper Quill would like to invite the novelists in our HACC community to consider submitting a chapter, or excerpt of up to 5,000 words for consideration. We are also hoping that the students in Professor Girardi’s English 114 class, Introduction to Novel Writing, will send us some of their work in the Spring after they’ve completed that great journey. Write On!
-Rick Kearns
Faculty Advisor
41st Wildwood Writer's Festival,
In case you missed this year's 41st Annual Wildwood Writer's Festival on March 24th, 2022, we've put together a Youtube playlist of recordings from the Zoom event. Click here to view the readings from this year's esteemed writers, Annemarie Ní Churreáin, Tamara Girardi, Peggy Robles-Alvarado, Geri Mendoza Gutwein, and Teresa Mei Chuc.
Meet: Geri Gutwein.
Check out our most recent interview, featuring the gifted writer and former HACC professor, Geri Gutwein!